


Invictus Maneo

by mysticdragonstar



Category: Kabby fandom, The 100 (TV)
Genre: AU, Action & Romance, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Betrayal, F/F, F/M, Fresh Start, Friends to Lovers, Grieving, Major Character Injury, Minor Character Death, New Friends, Sci-Fi, Slow Burn, Surprise returns
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2021-01-20
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:26:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 16
Words: 73,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25046848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mysticdragonstar/pseuds/mysticdragonstar
Summary: When Marcus Kane stepped into that airlock he was resigned to the fact that in few moments he would be dead, and then the cycle of lies and death would end with him. Who knew he'd wake up alone at the mercy of an advanced civilization with their own secrets and problems, but with a new chance at life.Starting over can be difficult on its own, but what happens when the people you left behind, long dead and gone start miraculously showing up in your life. Is there more to his resurrection than meets the eye?
Relationships: Abby Griffin & Marcus Kane, Abby Griffin/Marcus Kane, Jake Griffin & Marcus Kane, Kabby - Relationship, Raven Reyes/Roan
Comments: 40
Kudos: 62





	1. Awakening

**Author's Note:**

> Definitely will have some sci-fi themes running throughout, but lots of character development and fun to come.

Eligius

Space had always been cold. He knew it and embraced it while living on the Ark, after all there was no other choice. The Ark kept a constant circulating electrical current to avoid ice forming on the systems, however it did nothing for the frigid shock anyone received if they leaned against an outer panel. All he had to do was lean against a bulkhead and he knew the truth of that statement; the icy metal stealing the warmth from his blood. 

Marcus had known the dangers of space exposure even as a child. Vera Kane was not the sort of woman to allow her son to wander around the space station unsupervised, but the one day he escaped her attentions and stumbled down a passage to engineering’s latest repair project had him nearly floating himself. The lecture that followed served to scare him for a few years about the consequences of what being floated meant, but how much can a five-year-old take away from that experience. 

It didn’t surprise him when the airlock decompressed propelling him out into the vacuum of space. It didn’t surprise him when the air and water in his blood evaporated and his lungs collapsed, or when the freezing blanket of space wrapped its tight grip around the last fleeting beat of his heart. The council always proclaimed the process to be the most humane and painless due to a quick death, but you can feel a lot in fifteen seconds. The last thoughts he had weren’t of the pain he’d experienced in life, weren’t of his failures, and certainly weren’t of the many regrets he held close to his soul and would never put down. No in his last thought, all he could picture, all he could feel, and all he could see was the image of the woman he loved more than life itself pressed against the glass of the airlock hot tears streaming down her face.  
“I love you.” It was his last thought, or so he thought. 

Alpha Site

The corridor echoed as Sam ran through the hallways her steel toed boots clanging off the metal frames that made up the bridge’s crossways. She’d only done this run every day for the past two years, but somehow the unalterable nature of living underground never bored her. The sensor implanted in her wrist glowed a brilliant red under her skin collecting her biological data and sending it back to Command and Control for assessment. Sam hated her bi-monthly physical, but it was procedure considering the number of her superiors who went somewhat mad while they served in the same posting. Serving a military posting on the edge of a galactically sized black hole could have that effect on people. 

It didn’t seem to matter that they possessed longer lifespans, immunity to all physical disease, rapid healing, increased cerebral function, and increased physical capacity. After the eugenics projects of the previous centuries had done their work the body could take just about anything, however the mind was a different entity, and one that still managed to conquer them at times. 

Beep. She sprinted up the coiling flight of pristine metal stairs. Beep. Her quadruple valve heart straining against her chest as litres of blood pulsed their way from compartment to compartment, purifying, oxygenating, and electrifying before travelling out to every fibre of her body. One of the defining traits of her branch of the species was an evolved circulatory system which took on the ability of several other organs previously required. It was possibly their greatest scientific leap in regards to efficiency, unfortunately it could also be considered their greatest flaw, as no redundancy existed within the her anymore. Beep. Beep. Beep.

“Ugh in Caryx’s name,” she huffed as she pressed the circular device embedded behind her ear. “What?”  
“Sorry to disturb you Colonel but there’s an organic signal coming through the passage. You’re needed in C&C immediately.” Sam sighed, shook her head and pressed the sensor on her wrist deactivating it knowing that without the complete diagnostic scan she would have to repeat the assessment. The one thing she detested more than her biological review was anomalies from the black hole. It usually meant trouble.

“Confirmed,” she said pressing her fingers into the back of her neck as the frustration threatened to send all the muscles of her neck and back into spasm. “I’ll be there in five. Start recovery procedures and secure an open growth pod. Aeges out!”

Sam wouldn’t have time to change out of the skin tight sweat ridden clothing she was wearing, but it didn’t matter. She knew her body would absorb the water lost to the fabric before it could dry, if only she could do something about the residual smell that remained. If her legend was to be true, according to historians she never sweat. Too bad history is written by victors who like to write more fiction than truth.

The average time to run from the middle levels of Alpha Site to C&C was ten minutes and on any normal day she would have enjoyed beating that record, but Sam resigned herself to the fact that this was a necessary part of her position and suffered with stepping into the nearest transport pod. “Command and Control,” she instructed as the doors sealed behind her. Sam’s skin tingled as hundreds of tiny orange luminescent particles filled the chamber from above and below creating a glowing curtain. The light they emitted was blinding, but the gentle warmth soothed travellers prior to transport. Sam relaxed, breathing the particles in and accepting their control of her nervous system. The charge they built up within her felt like a million tiny fingers dancing across her skin, and then when the sensation was almost to the point of being exciting three, two, one and she was gone, her body transported into the central section of C&C. 

“Colonel, again I apologize…”  
“Shut it Saryn!” The small woman visibly winced. “I’m not interested in apologies. Just tell me what we have.” The woman nodded handing Sam a small towel she flung over a chair, and her digital pad while trying desperately not to shake at the obvious hostility. Sam swiped through the info-packed screens swiftly her eyes barely glancing at the information before being completely absorbed through her visual implants. The usual debris field gunk that flooded through the black hole on any given day made up most of the report until she came across the one signal that piqued her interest. 

“The organic matter seems to have a similar structure and genetic marker to that of those we’ve recovered from Sector K.” Saryn Patel, Lieutenant, six months in posting, matrix coding specialist and avid fan of the Colonel, although she’d never admit it, took a small step backward as if fearing the Colonel would freeze her in place.  
Sam read through bio-data, electrical anomalies and quantum residual particles as analyzed from the black hole they sat not five hundred miles from. Her pupils dilated to fill the entire retina of her eye when the anomalous signal recorded was identified as being artificial but within an organic structure. 

“Breathe Saryn,” she commanded as the woman beside her paled with anticipation. “Tell me what see you here.” Sam tried to assure the young Lieutenant with a gentle smile that she wasn’t about to be reprimanded for missing something, but it didn’t seem to help. She passed the data-pad back and indicated a small line of code connected to an artificial signal. 

“That’s impossible,” she said while quickly typing a new series of codes into her pad and connecting it to the main computer station behind her. A massive floor to ceiling screen sparked to life revealing the trajectory of the recovery craft and the inbound organic substance with an unknown artificial code they hadn’t seen before. “I don’t know how I missed that Colonel, I’m sorry.”

“You know, some day you’re going to have to explain to me why you spend half your time apologizing and the other half cowering in fear of me.” 

Saryn gulped and then sent the updated data to the recovery craft circling the outer rim of the black hole. “Apologies, I…” she stopped herself when Sam’s one raised eyebrow indicated she’d made her point.

“By the way,” Sam stepped closer to her, leaned in and whispered “Your attribute is showing.” Saryn flushed a crimson red as her hands dropped the data-pad on the console and tugged at her uniform attempting to cover the glassy sand coloured spines that had begun to erupt from her neck down. She shook her head, took a few deep breaths and, consciously slowed her heart rate to a base minimum far too slow for any normal creature to survive. The spines shimmered briefly before vanishing under her skin once again.

“Thank you, Colonel,” she smiled, the genuine relief flooding her eyes as her physical state was brought under control. 

“Do I make you nervous Lieutenant?” Sam asked punctuating the girl’s title purposefully.

“Yes ma’am.” The admission wasn’t odd just unexpected. Most of those under her command were never brave enough to admit she intimidated them. Colonel Samantha Aeges was a legend even amongst the upper echelon of their society. It’s why she’d been granted the posting of her choice, and after everything that happened back at home, time away was all she craved, but if the crew and general population of Alpha Site were any kind of indication, she couldn’t escape the legend that proceeded her.

“Secure the signal,” Sam ordered to the techs stationed along the perimeter of C&C. “I want it confined to an isolated data stream. Whatever or whomever it is, we’re not giving it unrestricted access to our systems.” The techs busied about the room typing in coding data until they confirmed the isolation chamber within their network was prepared should she wish to inspect it. “Alright, tell the recovery team to bring it in.”

The small two-man recovery craft set down in the docking bay an hour later. Soldiers and med-techs waiting anxiously as the team unloaded their recovered cargo. A half-torn apart carcass, bloated and crystallized, with black fluid beginning to thaw and melt onto the bay floor. The med-techs lifted what was left of the frame onto a floating pedestal and proceeded to push it towards the quarantined medical wing. 

“Colonel Aeges,” the tech spoke as he tapped the communications node behind his ear.  
“Yes.” She responded from C&C.  
“I can confirm the signal is active,” he said as he passed a device over the back of what might have once been called a head, now deflated with chunks of bone jutting out in random directions as if it were caved in from impact. “We’re proceeding with quarantine procedures until otherwise instructed.”  
“I want full scans and a complete memory dump immediately. All results sent to my data-link within the hour.”  
“Understood ma’am.”

Sam exhaled slowly, only now realizing she had been holding her breath. She wasn’t sure what she hoped to find with the retrieval, but an artificial signal from an organic lifeform was not what she was expecting.  
“Colonel,” Saryn’s voice woke her from her thoughts.  
“Hmm.”  
“If that signal is active then…”  
“Yes Lieutenant,” she confirmed Saryn’s thoughts before she could complete them. “It means that whoever that is, that just floated out of a black hole, a gravitational force that for all intents and purposes would destroy everything passing within its circumference…and it’s alive.”

Marcus couldn’t remember the last thing he felt when the airlock opened to space, he just knew that he was dead within seconds. Whenever he thought back to the Ark and the people he floated to maintain law and order onboard the space station he never imagined exactly what it felt like to be in their place. The swell of his chest prior to the collapse of his ribs, the cold creeping into his very bones as every cell in his body imploded, and then nothing. Darkness has a funny way of welcoming you to your death, but he’d accepted it as a necessary ending to his story. Only now something was poking holes in that darkness.

The light began to pierce through the shade in a dozen infinitesimal holes that stretched and clawed their way across the darkness covering his sight. First in tiny gaps and than larger until he could just make out something on the other side. Marcus tried to reach for the edge but found no hand where their should have been. His mind reeled at the non-corporeal state he couldn’t imagine, looking all around and finding nothing to grasp his thoughts onto until he heard it. Just behind the haze of white noise that echoed around him was a soft woodwind melody coaxing his mind from the dark through the widening holes and into the blinding light on the other side.

“It’s finished,” he whispered to the bright expanse enfolding before him. His mind reached out for it, welcoming an end to his pain.  
“Nope, not quite,” Sam stated. Marcus’s mind was pulled through the haze into an open grey emptiness. As he frantically searched the never-ending space, he could only see the woman standing before him, hands crossed on her chest, with a steely gaze fixed on him. “I wouldn’t get too comfortable either because I have some questions for you.”


	2. Rebirth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam and Marcus have a candid conversation. And other things are set in motion.

Alpha Site

“Can you hear me?” Sam asked as Marcus spun around trying to gauge some measure of where he was. “I need you to acknowledge whether you understand me.”

Marcus stopped and locked eyes with the strange woman a few feet from him. She stood easily as tall as he was, dressed in black clothing fit to her athletic frame, her stance relaxed but curious as one hand spun a small silver disk between her fingers. The curious brand of twin folded wings emblazoned on the back of her hand caught his eye briefly before returning to her icy blue gaze.

Marcus nodded. “I understand you.” He lifted his own hands finding the familiar crucifixion scars and coalition brand imprinted boldly into his skin. His skin, the thought echoed in his mind. His fingers grazed over the lifted flesh of the brand, travelled the length of his arms and felt at the closely shorn beard and hair that had been longer the last time he saw himself. 

“You look somewhat stunned,” Sam interrupted his thoughts. “Please take a seat,” she said as two basic metal chairs appeared in front of them. “I’ll attempt to explain in return for a few answers from you.” 

“How?” It was the only thing he could say, the only word he could muster through the whirling hurricane that was his mind. Sam directed him to the chair and he sat crossing one leg over the other, but as he did his legs flashed briefly before vanishing and reappearing as if a computer screen had blinked him into and out of existence. Marcus jumped from the chair, hearing the metal screech against the grey tiled floor beneath it. He pressed his hands to his chest and neck and finally found what he was looking for. He had no pulse. 

“Observation can you boost the incoming signal,” Sam spoke to the emptiness. “I’d rather not have our guest disappear on me.”

“Confirmed Colonel, signal enhanced.” A voice broke the empty silence and echoed throughout the confined hall that was taking shape around them. Wood paneled walls and stone bricks materialized from thin air connecting and solidifying until they were standing in what resembled a rustic wood cabin complete with brick laid fireplace and a roaring fire at its core. The metal chairs faded away, replaced by a three-piece furniture set the colour of dark fertile earth matching the wide-eyed stare he glued to the woman before him.

“I’d say breathe, but as you can tell you can’t actually do that.”

“Where am I?”

“Let’s start simpler than that shall we,” she tilted her head to the couch as she sat opposite in a wrap around auburn chair. “Can you confirm your name please?”

“I’m not saying anything until I know where I am and…,” he paused unable to articulate the last part of his thought.

“Why you’re alive?” She finished for him. “Like I said, let’s start simply. I’m Colonel Samantha Aeges and this is Alpha Site 219. We’re a research facility inside a two-mile-long asteroid gravitationally locked on the event horizon of a galaxy wide black hole, which as of solar rise this morning you floated out of.”

“Huh,” Marcus mumbled.  
“Now can you please confirm your name?”  
Marcus’s brow furled. “What do you mean confirm? That would seem to mean you already know it.”  
The side of Sam’s mouth lifted in the most subtle of smirks. “Hmm, I’m not disappointed. You do pay attention.”

“What could you possibly know about me?” Marcus glanced back at a solid steel door that had appeared in the wood wall behind him. It looked grossly out of place in the cabin but nothing was what it seemed there. 

“Let’s cut the through the games shall we. I don’t think we have to pretend that you are in any position here to leverage silence over my questions. I’m not asking you to betray a confidence or sell your soul, but I will have those answers and it starts with a simple confirmation of your name.”

“Marcus Kane,” he said through a tight jaw. The room around him glitched briefly before solidifying again.   
“Don’t worry Kane you won’t vanish.”  
“This isn’t real,” he sighed.  
“It isn’t organic, but it is very much real,” she explained. “The mind controls everything within the Mindscape. Right now, you’re within mine, however your memories have added some variety to the scenery it seems.” Sam rubbed the soft arm chair she sat in. “I didn’t dream this up, so it must have been you.”

“You’ve seen my memories, how?” Marcus bit back. All his years of command within the guard bubbled back to the surface as he tried to make sense of his surroundings, the woman before him, and what she was saying. His suspicions had always been tempered by those around him, but now he was alone in an unknown environment with no one he could trust. It was all too reminiscent of the City of Light, and even those memories gave him nightmares combined with what he’d been force to do during his time there.

Sam sensed the agitation rising in him. A small glass topped coffee table appeared between them with a steaming pot and two black mugs.   
“Tea?” She offered as she leaned forward pouring the golden liquid into the two mugs. “Be careful though, even here it will still burn.” 

Marcus shifted to the edge of his seat and gently lifted the mug, its weight a subtle comfort that things could be somewhat based in reality. “You didn’t answer my question.” He said.  
“Perhaps I don’t understand the question, then again maybe you don’t understand the question.” Sam smiled as she raised the mug to her lips. 

“I don’t appreciate games,” Marcus glared.

“Shame I do. Oh, very well,” Sam huffed over top of her tea. “I know who you are because the device we found in your neck is easily adaptable. Once it was inserted into an isolated system our nano-technology proceeded to scrub through every bit of data within it in order to determine whether you were a danger to us.”

“Then this is all just...”

“A virtual world, yes, created and maintained through the focus and discipline of someone like me. Although to be honest anyone can do it, but to maintain it takes practice.”

“There’s clearly something you want from me or we wouldn’t be having this conversation so why don’t you tell me what it is?” Marcus was cautious but he new addressing the issue directly left less to be misinterpreted. He needed to understand more about what was going on.

“Ah, the two greatest questions that if you’re able to answer can tell you everything you need to know about a person,” she paused, interlacing her fingers and leaning back relaxing into the soft cushions of her seat. “Who are you, and what do you want?”

“You already know who I am,” he responded. “And as of ten minutes ago I didn’t want anything. Besides you’ve stolen my memories, surely that’s all you need.”

“That’s not how the Mindscape works. I’ve only seen memories that the system flagged as being disturbing, threatening, or otherwise in violation of our philosophical and theological principles.”

“There must be a lot then,” Marcus said as he hung his head trying hard to block out the most recent memories forcing themselves to the surface. “Life was a struggle to survive.”

Sam nodded remembering the images as they filed themselves into her long-term memory storage. “If it brings you any kind of comfort, I am the only one who will see those memories, and yes there were quite a few, however by understanding their context I was able to determine options for you.”

Marcus fiddled with a tiny red thread unraveling beneath his fingers. He began to pull at it stretching and tugging at the seem of the couch. It ripped the fabric open revealing a hollow blackened emptiness underneath.

“Stop!” Sam shouted. Marcus froze, shocked but aware and ready should something turn for the worse, although he understood the humour in trying to fight someone within their own mind.

“Why?” He asked.

Sam exhaled slowly her eyes clenched shut, and the tear beneath his fingers stitched itself back together. “Tiny imperfections within the Mindscape allow us to always determine reality from virtual, but if you’d unravelled that thread any further you would have fragmented your own mind.”

Marcus placed his hands gently in his lap glancing around at the now apparent imperfections visible around the room. The green brick standing out against the sunset colour of the others, the three-legged chair in the corner that seemed to stand perfectly balanced, the cracked window pane that held no glass inside it, and of course the giant steel door directly behind him.

“I can see them,” he said. “Who are you people?”

“In due time Kane,” She hushed as her eyes flashed golden so briefly, he almost swore he’d missed it. Sam stood and placed a gentle hand on his shoulder as if impressing the fact that he could trust her. “Now you have a choice to make. You aren’t a threat to us, but you could be a vital help in more ways then you currently can understand. The door behind you leads to a new life with things you cannot imagine waiting for you. If you choose to live you can walk out that door right now and I’ll see you on the other side.”

“Or?”

“Or if you wish it, we can return you to oblivion,” she sighed. “We’ll destroy the mind drive and all traces left of you. You will be dead, again.”

“You consider me valuable, but you would let me make that choice?”

“It’s part of our code. One of the central principles of our society, free will, and from what I saw in your memories you also ascribe to that higher virtue.”

Marcus shook his head as if trying to shake himself awake. His body felt heavier and his fingers kept twitching at his sides. The internal battle he was fighting within his mind could lay a city to waste. How to choose between a life he felt he didn’t deserve and the fundamental instincts that drove human beings towards survival at all costs? “I chose death once, twice, more times then I want to admit.”

Sam moved closer until she was standing eye to eye with him. “Dying is easy. Surrendering is easy. Living is hard, and from what I’ve seen of your past, you make the hard choices. If you value life so much return to it.”

“No one will die because of me,” he asked it just as much as he stated it as a condition.

Sam smiled. “We don’t work that way.”

Marcus turned towards the steel door, marched towards it and placed his hand on the metal surface. It surprised him when the metal gave way and his hand phased through disappearing on the other side. He pulled it back quickly as if afraid he might lose it on the other side. Marcus glanced back at Sam.

“I’ll see you on the other side Kane,” she winked before vanishing from the room.

Sam opened her eyes in Alpha Site’s medical wing, her fingers already prying the silver disc off her temple and replacing it with the others on the table beside her. She peeled her body off the cold hard table cracking her neck and rolling her shoulders. She pinched her eyes shut as the overhead glare of the lights blinded her, but managed to smell Saryn’s sweetened perfume beside her.

“How long was I down for Lieutenant?” She asked her eyes still clenched shut.

“Fifteen days Colonel,” Saryn reported. “The candidate exited the data stream right after you did, and he’s already being synthesized.” Sam pressed her fingers into her temples attempting to force away the pounding headache that was forming as her normal brain waves tried to filter back into place.

“I hate Mindscape interrogations,” she winced as another light turned on behind her. “Bring him up to observation as soon as the process completes. It’s time to see if he’s the miracle we need him to be.”

Sam hopped off the table and started for the door when Saryn’s body blocked her escape. “I’m so sorry Colonel, but there’s one more thing.”

“Again, with the constant apologies, spit it out already.” Sam didn’t mean to be so harsh with her but a full fifty-piece orchestra was playing an off-key symphony in her head. 

“We were attempting to stabilize the containment field on your Mindscape when an internal glitch from the candidate caused our system to lag momentarily.”

“And…”

“The Mindscape was hacked. It was only a few seconds but from what we could tell the candidate was the target.” 

Sam’s eyes were slits as she exhaled slowly. All of her focus trained on her subordinate while she the asked the one question she was praying wouldn’t be answered the way she predicted.

“Lieutenant, what did they get?”

“Everything Colonel, everything,” Saryn replied.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kind of got on a roll and didn't want to stop. Who's liking Sam?


	3. Curious

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Surprises!

Alpha Site

It wasn’t a long process bringing someone back from the dead. They’d done it before; in fact, they had been doing the same thing for the better part of one-hundred and fifty years. Growth pods were isolated in the medical wing to remove the risk of unknown variables affecting the generation of the organic tissue. In most cases cloning was used to replicate a host body from prior tissue samples, however the tissue they had from when Marcus came through the black hole did not match his mental representation. That made the process more difficult. 

The inside of the pod glittered with the microscopic nanotech that slowly pieced together a body from the underlying skeleton and organ tissue to the superficial fascia and skin. It was like watching a dance of fireflies as Marcus Kane’s body began to take shape, synthesized from the very elements that make up the stars themselves. The nanotech finished and landed gently on his newborn skin, burrowing into the underlying surface and vanishing to join the rest that would make up his new nervous system. The shock they fired through his body started his heart, but his mind was still locked away within the system. 

Sam stood, back against the wall on the far side of the pristine room, waiting patiently as the process completed. She nodded once to the tech standing by the pod as he synchronized the waiting brain with Marcus’s residual mind left over within the mind drive. The jolt through his body woke him with a start as he punched against the inside of the pod. He panicked and flailed against the restraints holding his naked form to the padded surface underneath. The tech glanced to Sam, waiting for her to take the lead on the reaction he’d never seen before.

Sam strode over to the side of the pod and knocked gently above his eyes. “Kane,” she whispered softly. “Take a deep breath. Stop breaking my equipment.”  
Marcus was hyperventilating and twitching uncontrollably. His fingers flexing and extending into fists gripping the straps attempting to rip himself free. He kicked at the pod attempting to break the glass but it wouldn’t give.   
“Open the pod now,” Sam ordered.  
“But ma’am he’s unstable,” the tech replied.   
“Now!” The tech typed the instruction into his data pad and as the pod opened and folded back into the table underneath Marcus thrashed at the restraints harder. “Marcus stop!” His pupils were pinpricks against the whites of his eyes, and with the realization the barrier between him and freedom was gone he gripped the strap holding his wrist and pulled as hard as he could snapping it free from the pod. 

Sam forced his arm down with one hand and leaned the other onto his chest effectively holding him in place. She was stronger than him and it wouldn’t matter how hard he fought that wouldn’t change, however he didn’t know that, so he fought anyway. She leaned overtop of him, her face a mere inch away from him.

“Listen to me,” she said slowly. “You’re experiencing Cognitive Displacement. It causes an unnatural fear response to an otherwise benign event. You need to breathe. Ground yourself in something real.”

Marcus swallowed against the dryness coating his throat. His breathing was erratic and his heart pounded in his ears. His heartbeat. He froze as he heard the thumping in his ears, felt the pressure under his ribs as the new organ pumped forcefully against the cage that held it. It only took a second for him to realize he was alive, but longer for him to accept it, but after a minute he let out the breath he was holding and his heart rate returned to normal.

Sam watched the internal struggle with fascination as the artery at his neck pulsed at first rapidly and then slowed. She held his wrist firmly secretly counting the pulses beneath her fingertips, but as the rise of his chest slowed she removed both hands and stood beside the pod warily waiting for any further sign of a potential psychotic break. It wasn’t common, but they were in unchartered territory this time as Marcus had been organic with an artificial mind, and the two technologies were waging war over his new body. 

“Welcome back to the land of the living Kane,” Sam said as she pressed a code into the side of the pod removing the last of the restraints. It wasn’t lost on her the way the white scars of his past life etched deep lines into the new vibrantly warm skin. They wouldn’t be there unless they were so deeply part of his persona that they rooted themselves to his sense of self. It wasn’t something she was used to seeing in a new grown body as most would prefer to leave their scars behind, but not Marcus Kane. He was slowly becoming the most interesting part of the past month.

“Feel better?” She asked as she placed a thin grey robe on top of his chest and marched to the opposite side of the room, crossing her arms and leaning back against the back. 

“I feel strange,” his voice tore through his dry throat, raspy and low. “I don’t know what I’m feeling.”  
The tech slid around the pod, startling Marcus when he appeared right beside him and stabbed a small needle into his arm. Marcus reacted automatically, his hand flying out and shoving the man in the chest sending him flying back six feet to land on his back. 

Sam smiled and a small laugh escaped her. “Serves you right,” she shook her head at the tech. “You should know better than to approach a new grown like that. Don’t they teach you anything in here anymore?”

“I’ve never seen a new grown do that,” the tech argued as he pushed himself up to standing, rubbing his backside and wincing at the sore spot he found.  
“You learn something new every day,” she said. “Don’t worry, they normally don’t do that. You’re dismissed Jansen. I’ll finish up here.”  
“I’m supposed to go through the full diagnostic,” he stated as boldly as his now bruised ego allowed.  
Sam smiled, stepped closer and pulled the data pad from his fingers. “Go deal with the training injuries from the recruits. I’m sure there’s a broken bone or something to set.” Jansen was all too happy to leave the Colonel alone with the man who’d just thrown him across the room without so much as a thought.   
“Now if you try that with me,” Sam said as she approached Kane slowly. “You’ll be the one hitting the floor. We clear.” Marcus just nodded.  
“C&C,” she spoke out loud as the sensor behind her ear shone to life. “Barring an emergency, I’m offline for the next hour.”

“Understood Colonel,” Saryn’s high pitched voice broke through the coms. Sam just shook her head knowing too plainly that Saryn was still smarting from the thorough reprimand Sam had given her not a couple hours before. She knew it wasn’t her fault the data was stolen, however the question of who managed to break into an encrypted server, off planet no less, and make off with some extremely sensitive information, was the pressing concern.

Sam was always good at compartmentalizing her thoughts and emotions, and that was a problem for later. She was meticulous in her examination of Marcus, switching from taking blood to activating sensor implants beneath his skin, and recording every possible abnormality not normally found on a new grown body. Her temple throbbed as a flash of Marcus chained to a wood cross, two rusty nails plunged through his wrists, and his voice raw from screaming into the night, tore through her mind as she grazed the crucifixion scars at his wrists. She shook her head slightly as if trying to dislodge the newly printed memory from her own mind.

“Are you alright?” Marcus asked as his fingers twitched under her gaze. Sam didn’t meet his eyes, but simply nodded and continued examining everything from his surface temperature and capillarization rate in his extremities to his primary reflexes. Her thoughts kept drifting back to images of blood and violence, and although her own past was fraught with bad memories it was his that currently plagued her. 

“You don’t look alright,” he stressed as he noticed the pinched skin between her brows and the almost imperceptible shake she kept giving her head. He knew something was wrong but it was clear she wasn’t going to be forthcoming with the information. “So how does a military officer have such extensive medical abilities?”  
Sam blinked and the corner of her mouth scarcely lifted. He was curious, or just being friendly, she couldn’t quite tell. She drew a scalpel down the curve of his shoulder and watched as the blood, which Kane noticed seemed to spark as the blade left his skin, clotted and sealed the wound within seconds. 

“I was a physician once, before I joined the military, but that was a long time ago. Another lifetime even.”  
“The military and medicine are diametrically opposite career paths.”  
“My past is my own,” she stopped him. “And I’d rather leave it there.”  
“Says the woman who has my worst nightmares crammed in her head,” he bit back. It was the first time he really looked at her. Her long black hair hung straight done to the centre of her back, her shoulders squared and strong not showing any hint that his comment had any effect. Her long fingers tapped away at the data pad, the twin wings marking on the back of her right hand stretching as she typed. 

“What is that?” he asked indicating the brand on her hand.  
She didn’t even stop typing to answer. “It marks the branch of the military I joined.”  
“They brand you,” he coughed as his hand slid over the coalition brand on his right arm.   
“Not the way you think. The nanotech within our bodies alters the pigmentation on the surface of the skin allowing it the form different shapes. We can cognitively control it. It isn’t a brand in the strictest sense as we can remove them quite easily.” She pinched the bridge of her nose as the throbbing in her head began to pulse loudly between her ears. 

Sam finally placed the data pad into a port on the growth pod and watched as the information was transferred without a second thought. She finally met his gaze and couldn’t tell if he was genuinely concerned for her well-being or curious. 

“It’s just a side effect of the Mindscape,” she explained. “By examining your memories to determine threats the controller takes on those memories. They’re saved in our own minds.”  
“I’m not sure how I feel about that,” Marcus said with a huff.   
“Don’t worry Kane it doesn’t last long. The nanotech in our bodies eventually filters out the memories that aren’t ours, however for the time being your memories are temporarily imprinted on my own mind.”  
“I wouldn’t wish that on anyone,” he breathed.   
“Like I said don’t worry,” she said as she stepped behind the pod, keyed a code into the screen and the pod re-sealed forcing Marcus to hop off rather unceremoniously. “Now would you like to see Alpha Site?”

The facility was unlike anything he’d ever seen. On the Ark they ran on the bare minimum, constantly under the knife to conserve resources while living with the inexorable truth that they could all die with the slightest malfunction, but Alpha Site was not a hastily scrounged together group of stations, rather a floating mega city in space complete with gravity courtesy of the asteroid. Marcus followed Sam stride for stride keeping pace with the long legs of the woman in front of him. It was the first time in years he could say his knees and back didn’t ache when he sharply turned each bend she rounded through the maze of hallways carved into the iron rock around them. 

Excitedly trying out his legs he hopped up a metal stairwell two at a time until he nearly toppled over Sam who had stopped and was now watching the Cheshire cat grin that was plastered on his face.   
“Are you finished?” She said as she shook her head.   
Marcus let a brief chuckle escape. “Sorry, is this how you feel all the time?”  
“I doubt it.” She snarked raising one eyebrow while letting her gaze drift across his whole body as if searching for something.   
“I feel like I could run through a wall.” Marcus hadn’t felt this strong since his teen years. In fact, he was pretty sure he’d never felt this strong. His shoulders and hips moved fluidly as his muscles stretched and contracted with each movement pulling the thin robe tighter against his body. 

“Stop playing with it like it’s a new toy,” Sam said as if scolding him. “You have much still to learn about that body. For example,” She said as she strode right up to him pulling a handheld device out of the back pocket of her uniform pants. She flipped the screen to a silver mirror and held it up to his face. “Your attribute is showing.”  
Marcus caught his reflection in the mirror and almost didn’t see the small changes in his irises. The usual warm earthy brown was surrounded by a crimson ring that seemed to sparkle and expand as he blinked. “What is it?”  
“A consequence of genetic manipulation. We all have one, a genetic anomaly that appears under situations of stress or excitement.”

Marcus pulled at the skin on his face as if stretching it out would somehow return his eyes to normal. He realized that the colour wasn’t the only difference, but his vision was sharper, clearer, and magnified. He could see the slightest hint of raised hair follicles on Sam’s neck she pulled her black collar higher. “So, what’s yours?”

“That’s enough,” she growled. Marcus shook himself from his single-minded fascination with her skin, and he felt the exhilaration of something else just bubbling below the surface…fear. “You will learn to control it. Yours seems benign for the time being, however there are others whose attribute would cause severe damage. Let’s not tempt fate by testing how far yours will go.” She spun on her heel to continue down a narrow passage before shouting over her shoulder “At least not yet anyway. Oh, and never ask anyone that.”

Marcus followed keeping a wider distance between the two of them, partially because he was distracted by the structures around him, and partially because he thought he may have crossed a line with Sam. 

They passed dozens of people on their way across the station, but after an hour of stairwells, crossways, and the occasional ladder Marcus heard an echo ahead of them like rain hitting tinny metal. When they rounded the corner Marcus was awestruck. 

“Welcome to the Hub,” Sam said as she stepped aside. The open cave must have been fifteen hundred feet deep surrounded by a coiling stone walkway that seemed to be carved into the asteroid itself. Marcus imagined it as the inside of an anthill complete with endless chambers cut into the walls lighting up the cave like stars in a night sky.   
“It’s incredible,” he said.  
“Yes, it is. From here you can get anywhere, any system and any amenity, are just through the numerous passages you can find easily from this point.”  
“I wouldn’t know where to begin.” As if on command the palm of his hand began to tingle and glow, and as he checked it light filtered through his skin to reveal a complete holographic map of Alpha Site floating above his palm. “Hah,” he yelled startling a young boy who was walking past. 

“Like I said, there’s much to learn about your new body,” Sam said as she glanced around him. “In the meantime, I leave you in another’s capable hands.”  
Marcus looked up in time to find the largest man he’d ever seen standing behind Sam. To describe him as a bear of a man would be an understatement. His shoulders and chest were as broad as a Redwood tree and the length of his legs left him towering above both he and Sam. She smirked a knowing smile as Marcus’s eyes widen in disbelief. 

“Marcus Kane, meet Nias,” she casually waved her hand as she introduced him as if it was the most normal thing in the world to find an eight-foot-tall dark-skinned man staring at you. Marcus noticed the man held himself with a level of poise and authority his size wasn’t responsible for, but as Marcus visibly took in all of the man he noticed the faint mark matching Sam’s on the back of his hand. Marcus made a point of deciding to ask more about the meaning of the mark when he wasn’t so dumbfounded by the giant staring at him as if a bug to be crushed. 

The man stretched out his hand to Kane and shook it once. Marcus had to try not to yelp as the grip nearly crushed the newly grown bones of his hand. Marcus understood Nias was making a point. He wasn’t just to serve as a guide, but as his guard.

Sam nodded. “Well then I’ll leave you to explore. Nias will ensure you get to your quarters and you’ll start orientation tomorrow.”   
“Orientation?” Marcus asked. 

Caryx (Origin Planet below Alpha Site)

The explosion that erupted through the core of the fission plant was enough to send a pluming cloud of orange dust and ash into the atmosphere. The automated systems immediately activated the emergency protocols shutting down the inner chamber and isolating the atomic matrix from continuing the breakdown. The residual energy from the gathered nuclear fission reactions was contained within an opaque cylinder in the centre of the matrix chamber.

The automated systems were blaring loudly throughout the plant as an artificial voice repeated the three protocols of the facility for the few workers within the plant. They could be seen in their bright green attire dashing from system to system trying to shut down or contain the chance of another explosion. 

First protocol: Energy must be contained or re-routed; abundance may explode.  
Second protocol: Residual energy shut-off will allocate energy to void zone.  
Third protocol: In case of facility tampering destroy storage.

In the chaos, no one noticed four shadowed figures ducking between closing bulkheads and behind loudly vibrating machinery. They moved with intent and purpose toward the central chamber. The closed off space had only one entrance and the risk of the shutdown procedures locking them in was high, but they new the risks when they volunteered. The team positioned around the chamber, two beside guarding against any potential resistance, one at the door typing in the hacked code they’d stolen, and the last hanging back under a steel bridge that spanned the width of the room.

“You sure this code is right.” The man at the chamber door panted, missing keystrokes as the doors all around them slammed shut and sealed with the distinctive sound of air being removed. If they were still there when the final bulkhead closed, the air would be vented, the storage unit destroyed, and all their plans would come to nothing. 

“You know it is,” a woman answered. The man at the door fumbled at the keypad twice more until finally entering the code correctly. The deadlock seal on the chamber slid open with a gust of air rushing inside the vacuumed space. The man had barely stepped into the room, grabbed the cylinder and stepped out when a shot rang out across the room. He fell back hard against the ground as the door of the chamber began to seal him inside, a fresh burning hole in his shoulder where the energy shot had gone right through him. 

The two guards on the side circled the chamber firing rounds of light out into the empty expanse, both uncertain as to where the shot originated from. The woman hiding under the bridge sprinted across the room, and in one deft move slid through the closing door beside the blood-soaked floor. She pressed her hands into the shoulder wound while peeling back the layers of armor that were supposed to protect from these very weapons. 

“I can’t…breathe,” the man choked out as he gurgled and blood soaked through his mask. The woman pulled back the hood and unstrapped the mask from the back of his head. “No don’t,” he sputtered.  
“No choice,” she said as she flung the mask across the chamber where it landed with an audible splat, the blood soaking the floor. The man’s cold blue eyes stared angrily back at her as she pushed her palm into the second wound bleeding profusely out his neck. “You can chastise me later.” She pulled a synthesized tissue adhesive out of a pack at her side and pressed it to his neck first, cauterizing the edges with a silver knife-shaped torch. 

His breathing came a little easier, but the blood from his mouth dripped back along his face before covering the twin crescent scars circling the orbits of his eyes.   
“Damn,” she shouted. “I can’t see a thing in this.” She pulled the hood off her head and a honey brown braid fell around her shoulder as she unstrapped the mask and pulled it free.   
“Don’t!”  
“I’m not letting you die Roan, not after all this.” She rushed to fix another patch to his shoulder as the familiar sound of air evacuating a space surrounded them. If she didn’t hurry it wouldn’t matter as the chamber would vent the air and they’d die anyway.

“This was a horrible plan Abby,” Roan groaned as she pressed into his shoulder burn the patch in place.

Abby grinned. “You can tell him that when you see him.” She finished the patch and helped him to his feet, the opaque cylinder gripped in Roan’s hand while he leaned his weight against her. The rest of their team lay dead on the ground outside the chamber, a military force shooting them twice more as they already lay dead just to make a point. Abby pressed her fingers to the space behind her ear and shouted two words. “Invictus Maneo.” The flash blinded the soldiers in the room, and when it dimmed Roan and Abby were gone, the only evidence of their presence the bubbled blood baked into the white walls of the chamber.


	4. Orientation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love world building. This chapter runs a little longer. Enjoy!

Alpha Site

There was an air of excitement buzzing around the facility as Marcus traipsed from section to section following the map glowing above his hand. It hadn’t taken him long to figure out the cognitive control between a few new things his new body could do. The ease of thought to reaction based partially in the nanotech swirling through his body made the things he could suddenly do unreal to him. All he had to do was think a location, or an idea of a location and the image would highlight the mark on the map and direct him there. 

The numerous people he passed along the way stared in awe as if he was some sort of deity. He supposed it didn’t help that he was still only wearing the thin fabric robe he received in medical. A group of women even went out of their way to touch him as he passed by, but they were quickly shooed away by Nias. It did surprise him that Alpha Site wasn’t just home to soldiers. He saw plenty in the distinct black and silver military uniform of the soldiers in service there, the lab techs, engineers, and scientists all wore blue identifying bands, and the medical personnel wore white with red bands wrapped around their arms, otherwise anyone else seemed like regular everyday people in whatever combination of clothing seemed appropriate for the tasks they were undertaking. The one observation that he kept noticing no matter where they went was there were no children, at least none he saw.

Nias wasn’t much help as he stayed back from Kane watching him closely but not standing in his way. The man was a riddle. He didn’t speak even when spoken to. When Marcus addressed him directly, he simply nodded, pointed, or otherwise ignored him. Nias did stop him a few times from entering an area he was apparently not permitted to go. The man gave no hesitation to simply grab Marcus by the arm and spin him toward another direction, he did it often enough that Marcus had fingerprint bruises on the inside of his arm already, although the did heal and vanish as quickly as they appeared. 

“So, you really aren’t going to say anything to me, are you?” Marcus asked. Nias shook his head and gave Marcus a small shove towards a brightly lit pathway bordered by short red leafed shrubs. The ceilings were glass and opened to a view of the stars, the floors transitioned from the cold hard metal and concrete of the Hub epicentre to a velvety grass that brushed his feet as he stepped through it. Every thirty feet there was a door emblazoned with a number on its frame, and when he reached sixty-two Nias grabbed his shoulder and held him in place. Marcus attempted to slip his grip but Nias only tightened it until he felt the bone crack under his fingers. Marcus winced but tried not to show it. 

Down the hall a petite woman with copper skin and brightly spiked red hair bounded until she jumped and wrapped her lanky legs and arms around Nias’s broad back. Nias didn’t blink. He reached an arm over his shoulder, grabbed her collar and flipped her overhead catching her in his arms before she hit the ground.

Saryn giggled as he stood her back up. “You know I almost had you that time.” Nias’ lip twitched before he shook his head. “Someday I’ll manage to beat you, and when that day comes you’ll owe me dinner big guy.” Marcus cleared his throat softly. 

“Hi your Kane right,” Saryn said as she thrust her hand towards him. “Lieutenant Patel. I’ve been dying to meet you since they pulled your corpse on board.” Marcus shook her hand gently as the bone in his shoulder cracked itself back into place. Saryn heard and whacked Nias. “You damaged him already.” Nias only shrugged and smiled for the first time. 

“I don’t think he likes me,” Marcus explained. 

“Oh, don’t mind Nias,” she said. “Anyway, I got him from here, besides you have to get ready for tonight. Nias you’re fighting right?” He nodded. “Great see you there.” Nias bowed slightly, took one last chilling stare in Kane’s direction, and left.  
“Yeah he doesn’t like me.”

“On the contrary he didn’t leave you broken on the floor so that’s an improvement for a Paladin, although he’s always been one of the gentle ones.” Saryn touched the back of Kane’s hand and raised it to the number on the door. “Sorry, it’s coded to you so you have to open it.” The door slid sideways and disappeared into the frame. “Welcome home,” she said as she pulled him inside. 

Marcus wasn’t a fan of being thrown around like a ragdoll but it’s all his hosts seemed to do. She plunked herself down at a small metal table with three additional chairs in the centre of the room and watched Kane with something he could only describe as abject glee. Saryn could barely contain herself as the man before her slowly examined his surroundings.

It’s what he always did in a new environment, ever since he was young he’d been complimented on his ability to observe his surroundings and determine the best course of action for containment, escape, control, all perfect skills for a member of the guard. Marcus pressed his palm to his temple as the memories of his childhood flooded the forefront of his thoughts and made his head throb. Running through Mecha station, the metal clunking underneath his boots, the others close on his heels as they ducked in and out of unsealed bulkheads playing ‘Dash or Die’. It wasn’t a game he was particularly fond of but it passed the time when they wanted to run off some steam. Who knew it would cost him the life of a friend? Marcus shook away the memory. 

The space was more than he was used to. A small kitchen to his right, bathroom to the left and further in a bedroom with a balcony that looked out onto an ocean of green, red, and purple leafed trees. His breath caught in his throat at the sight, especially when the artificial light above seemed to shimmer off the leaves. It was Saryn’s tapping as her foot hit the metal leg of the table that finally woke him from his thoughts.  
“What is this place? He asked. 

“The Colonel told you, a research centre.” She explained. “I suppose it is more than that though. At any one time we have a population around fifteen thousand manning the facility. A mix of soldiers, scientists, programmers like me, and of course all the staff and families that call this home for years at a time.” The word families piqued his interest, but he wouldn’t ask, not yet, there was still so much he needed to learn. 

“It’s amazing,” he breathed. “I’ve never seen anything like it.” He pressed his hand to the glass and the panes split, sliding back into the wall. A breeze rushed through the opening carrying with it the smells from the plants below. Spices and herbs filled his nose as he breathed deeply, filling his lungs for the first time in what felt they forever. He supposed he’d never breathed cleaner air, even on Earth, the tinge of radiation was always something he could tell even before the death wave wiped most of civilization off the map. 

“Anyway, you need to get ready,” Saryn squealed as she bounced towards the bedroom. Marcus smiled before following her. The bedroom was larger than he’d guessed with a sizeable bed, a dark wood wardrobe and desk, and a peculiar looking padded chair in the corner that looked like it had an electronic interface in the headrest. “The showers through there,” she directed him as she pushed him through another sliding door in the far wall. “Clean up. There are clothes in the wardrobe, and then we need to get to the coliseum.”  
“Where?”  
“Just go. I’ll answer questions on the way, but I don’t want to miss Nias’ fight, so hurry already.” Saryn almost caught his nose in the door as she swiped her hand over the sensor closing it. 

Caryx (Origin Planet below Alpha Site)

Roan slammed his fist into the wall, the concrete shifting and cracking underneath his fist. They’d been locked in a cell since he and Abby had made it back with their cargo intact. It must have been days but they had no sense of time except for the meals that kept sliding through an opening in the wall. There was no door, but a skylight above them was the only source of light and Roan kept count of the boots he saw walking over it. 

“I’d rather not have to treat your hand as well,” Abby sniped. She was crouched in the corner of the room. The sleeves of her shirt still covered in Roan’s crusted blood had begun to smell, but it was only thing she had to wear. 

Roan punched the wall once more for good measure, his knuckles barely feeling the impact. The skin on his neck and chest was still coated in his dried blood, and his long hair had knotted into clumps. “Something’s different here. What do you think Doc? You noticed it too right.” Abby stood and gently examined the fresh cuts in between his knuckles that were already sealing before her eyes. 

“I don’t know what’s going on,” she said. “We both were given the same set of instructions. Steal the container, say the words, and we’d be safe. They’d be safe.”  
“And you take their word for it?” Roan bit as he paced the small space.  
“Of course not, but they have my daughter,” Abby murmured. “I can’t lose her too. We did what they asked, now we wait.”

They didn’t have to wait long before the glass above them slid away and a rope ladder was dropped down to them. Abby climbed out first, the light nearly blinding her as she reached for the edge, a large hand seizing her wrist and pulling her out of their prison. Her feet sunk into the soft white sand the surrounded her as she struggled to find a stable place to stand. Roan followed effortlessly, launching himself out of the hole and stumbling slightly as his feet made contacted with the soft ground. They both froze when their vision cleared and a squadron of soldiers armed with laser rifles were standing three feet away, their gun barrels trained on the two of them. 

The man in front of the soldiers looked mildly out of place in a tailored red and black uniform with a fern leaf crest on his shoulder and the rifle slung over his shoulder. Abby met his inquisitive iron gaze with a stubborn stare that dared not to blink. 

“Abigail Griffin. Roan of Azgeda. Thank you.” he spoke in smooth dulcet tones. “Your assistance was unforeseen, but I am grateful for all you’ve done.”  
“What did we take? Abby asked. “We deserve to know.” She was patient. Roan was not, but he knew better than to attempt to attack an enemy he knew nothing about. He crossed his arms over his chest as if holding them locked in placed was the only way not to lash out.

“You’ve aided our cause. With the canister you stole, we’ll have the energy requirements to finish what we’re building.” He walked towards the low hanging sun, subtly waving for them to follow. Roan moved swiftly towards the man, his feet barely stopping when he wanted them too. “You’ll have to forgive the sequencing time lapse in your new bodies. We don’t possess the necessary number of nanites to ensure a swift adaptation period, but no matter you’ll adjust soon.”

“What are talking about?” Abby asked as her heart rate picked up. She was scared, on a strange world with no allies minus Roan, and the people that held them were speaking in riddles. 

The man beckoned them forward and as they approached the top of the dune, the desert before their eyes tapered off into a crystal sparkling ocean that crashed against the volcanic glass shoreline. Abby had a difficult time keeping her thoughts from spiraling as she looked at the otherworldly sight.

“Welcome to Caryx,” he said. “Continue to be of service and your daughter will be safe. Fail and this will be her fate.” He reached out and gently touched two fingers to her face. It felt like someone had punched clear through her insides, the vision of Clarke bound, gagged, beaten, bleeding, and left in the scorching sun to rot. He let her see it again and again until the vision of blood-filled pustules exploding on Clarke’s skin made her taste bile. 

“Don’t you touch her,” Abby spat. The man simply smiled and tilted his head slightly as if in agreement.  
“I won’t, I promise.”

Alpha Site

Marcus had managed to muss his hair back into some semblance of a style. It had been a long time since his hair was short enough that he didn’t just pull it back. His beard was neatly trimmed and the scars on his arms and torso reflected the light of the space back against the mirror. It surprised him how much brighter they looked in the clean light there. On Earth everything had been dust and blood, in the bunker they lived in darkness, and on Eligius the artificial light just sunk into surfaces like being swallowed into an abyss. This was the first time he’d seen his body so clearly. Although the chiseled abdomen and dense musculature was something he’d thought long since past. He really would have to learn the new abilities of this body.

He felt out of place with the clothes Saryn put out on the bed. The soldier’s uniform fit him perfectly, but it didn’t suit him, not the way it once would have. Marcus was past that point in his life, or at least he hoped he was.

A knock rapped hard against the front door. He opened it to find Saryn standing there impatiently tapping her foot. “It’s about time Kane. Let’s go.” She grabbed him by his arm and pulled him straight out the door, her tiny fists balling into the soft fabric of his shirt until she managed to tug him down the hall and into an empty transport tube. “Don’t hold your breath. Inhale them,” she instructed as the tube was filled with orange particles. 

Marcus closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and relaxed. The edges of his vision, even with his eyes sealed shut, glowed brilliantly, but the scalding heat that caressed his skin made him open them again, and what he saw was nothing he could’ve expected.

The Coliseum was what Saryn called it, and it very much met the historical truth of that name. A colossus, being of immense structure and form, was exactly what Marcus was trying to capture in his mind as his eyes roamed the space. The outer frame of the stadium was round with rows upon rows of seating capable of fitting everyone in Alpha Site all at once. The ground wasn’t sand, but a soft field of yellow grass, and the sandy coloured brick of the arena made Marcus feel like he wasn’t on a space station after all.  
A single four-tiered marble pulpit stood on one side of the arena, and when he finally focused on it, he noticed Sam sitting alone inside in what looked like dress uniform. The normal black and silver she wore before replaced with a radiant white with the black winged emblem from her mark emblazoned across her chest. He couldn’t help but stare, but looked away quickly when she met his gaze. 

“This is amazing,” he said.

“You haven’t seen anything yet,” Saryn directed him towards the upper rows of seating. “Best view in the house, well unless you’re down in the arena. Then you see everything.”

Marcus stopped and Saryn bumped into him hard. “Clarify something for me,” he said ensuring that his tone was stern. “I’m not expected to fight, am I?”

“Not unless you want to, why?” She genuinely seemed confused. “Right I haven’t told you anything about this yet. Sorry, my bad. I just get a little scatter brained sometimes. You think I would grow out of that already.”

Marcus smiled. “Well you’re young, maybe when you’re older you’ll settle a bit.” He wasn’t prepared for the hysterical laughter that rocked Saryn into a fit. “Did I say something amusing.”

“Yes,” she coughed as she tried to catch her breath. “How old do you think I am?”

Marcus scrutinized her a little more closely, however he still couldn’t understand the joke he was apparently missing. “I’m not sure, twenty-four maybe.” Again, another fit of laughter racked her body.

“I’m sorry, you don’t know so it’s rude to laugh, but I’ve never had anyone think me that young in a long time. In fact, you’d be hard pressed to find anyone on Alpha Site, let alone Caryx, below the age of a hundred.”

“What?” He said confused. 

“Yep. I’m one hundred and thirty-two.” She smiled as if she hadn’t just dropped that information with a thud.

“Genetic manipulation,” he thought out loud. “The Colonel mentioned you were all products of genetic manipulation. I take it life longevity is one of your advantages.”

“Longer lifespans, immunity to all disease, denser muscle tissue, lighter bone structures, higher mental acuity and intelligence. We have it all, and now so do you.”

“I can’t believe it.”

“Believe it,” she said as she smacked his shoulder. “Now they’re starting can we sit please. You don’t have to fight, but I want to watch the others.”

Marcus listened intently as she explained the purpose of Orientation. Once a month the military residents posted on Alpha Site could undergo examinations to seek promotion. The first stage was combat readiness and was tested within the coliseum in the presence of their senior officer, Colonel Samantha Aeges. The orientation was meant to welcome newcomers, such as himself, to the process and give them the opportunity to see or participate if need be. Any soldier could challenge any other of a superior rank to attempt to prove themselves ready for that particular position. There were other examinations afterward, but they had to defeat their opponent to pass the first.

They watched twelve fights over the span of an hour. Some ending in seconds, others lasting much longer but all ending with a clear victor. Saryn whooped and hollered when Nias stood at the centre of the arena, bare chested and ready for anything. His opponent was a man half his size, but as the fight began Marcus understood why Nias had challenged the man. The lithe man moved like a snake, coiling and snapping with ferocity every time Nias even got close to landing a blow. Where Nias was all strength and power, his opponent exuded cunning and speed, sliding each of Nias’s blows off of him and countering swiftly into the weaker points of his body. After ten minutes Nias lay at the man’s feet unconscious. The crowd roared to life, saluting both the man and Nias for their efforts. Marcus had never witnessed such a mastery of combat, not in the guard, not with the grounders, and not in the fighting pit. 

“Hey Kane,” Saryn whispered in his ear. “You need to calm down, your attribute.” 

He blinked slowly, took and couple deep breaths and watched as Saryn searched his eyes before nodding. “Why is such a taboo to show your attribute?”

“I suppose it derives from not revealing your true self to your enemy. We keep our attributes hidden until we need them. That way our enemies can’t expect them.”

“Do you have enemies here?” Marcus searched her eyes for any hint she would lie to him, but found none.

“There’s always an enemy. Sometimes they just don’t reveal themselves.”

“I lay challenge,” a voice boomed from the centre of the arena. Everyone waited for who would be the opponent, but the man just kept his eyes fixed on the pulpit. “Colonel Aeges, I challenge you for superiority over Alpha Site.”

The echo around the coliseum dropped from a roar to a hushed audible gasp within an instant. Sam’s fingers drummed against the armrests of her chair as she appraised her challenger. He wasn’t particularly large or fierce looking, but as Marcus had already learned by watching Nias’s defeat, size and appearance really didn’t matter here. His blonde hair and olive skin shone bright as the sun, but the cold look in his eyes left nothing to the imagination. He was a killer. 

“I don’t know you,” Sam said as her voice echoed off the walls. 

“I know you Colonel.”

“You understand what your challenge entails,” Sam asked more out of clarification than anything else. She had only ever been challenged twice in the two years she’d been there, and then only by those who served under her seeking promotion, but never to seize her position. That was suicide. The man nodded as Sam stood, jumped from the pulpit and landed effortlessly on the grass below.

“What’s going on?” Marcus inquired. “She’s going to fight. Can’t she just refuse the challenge?” Saryn face was a mask of apprehension and anxiety. “Lieutenant?”

“She won’t refuse,” Saryn explained. “Not because she can’t, but because if he’s challenging her from supremacy, he’s looking to remove her from position here. She can’t allow that. 

“Who do you stand for soldier?” Sam asked. She watched as he pulled a glove from his right hand revealing the wings across his knuckles.

“In Caryx name, he’s a Paladin,” Saryn whispered. 

“Like her,” Marcus replied.

“No, not even close, but it does mean he was sent here to do this. Paladins progress on merit, but never require assessment this way. They have their own methods which are more secure.”

The solider pulled his shirt over his head to reveal a red sun marked over his left breast. “I serve at the behest of Cyrus, Admiral and Lord Commander of The Eight.” An audible gasp reverberated off the walls of the coliseum.

Saryn’s hand shot out and grabbed Marcus’s arm hard. “It’s a coup. He’s going to try to kill her.” 

“I accept your challenge,” Sam said with quiet resignation. “Your name soldier, so I may remember you.”

“I am Kieran, and I will have the honour of defeating you Colonel.” Sam didn’t respond, she only looked to Saryn in the crowd and nodded.

“I have to go,” Saryn said. “I have to stand witness. Stay here. This is the last fight. After that you’ll be called.” Then she left, running full tilt toward the arena’s edge and jumping inside.

Kieran crouched low and widened his stance, fists ready to receive whatever blow may come. He stretched his back and slowly black scales pierced through the flesh to cover his back, arms and torso in scaled armor. Sam didn’t even blink. She slowly marched towards him, broad steps at first then running flat out.

When the first blow struck the ground shook and the coliseum roared to life chanting and cheering. Kieran charged and struck out sending punch after punch at Sam, and her blocking and deflecting every one with a feline grace. He kicked low just skimming her left knee as she jumped, flipping and torquing her body in mid-air to land beside him. She slid under his right elbow and landed a crushing knee to his armored side. Kieran stumbled back briefly before launching his next assault.

The fight continued, Kieran attacking, Sam deflecting and countering until with one decisive deflection Sam snatched his arm in mid-strike and snapped his elbow joint. It hung limp at his side as large pieces of his scaled armor fell in shards to the grass beneath embedding themselves in the ground like tiny knives. 

“It’s over,” Sam hushed and the crowd died down immediately. “You fought well, but you cannot win. Don’t throw your life away.”

“I serve Cyrus.”

Sam shook her head, took a shallow breath and waited. Kieran charged and when he was within reach she attacked. Her hands moved with blistering speed and vicious accuracy as she dodged and deflected his useless strikes while cracking his ribs and breaking both knees with a solid single leg sweep that flipped him onto his back, blood spraying from his mouth. 

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. She circled his mangled body watching his shattered chest sputter to rise and fall as breathing became a struggle. 

Marcus watched in awe as the air around Sam seemed to shimmer and wave. His vision seemed to focus closer and closer almost as if he was standing right next to her. Steam rose from her skin as the sweat from the fight evaporated. Her skin glowed briefly before fading as if solar rays were peaking in an out through clouds. Marcus’s vision magnified further and he finally saw it, beneath her pale skin, like a river of molten lava, a fire raging so uncontrollably it would consume the world if allowed to be free. 

Sam knelt beside the broken man at her feet. “I’m sorry. Rest now Paladin.” She leaned forward and touched her palm to his mangled chest and as she did the fire within her rushed forward submerging him beneath a river of fire. The explosion rocked the arena as everyone watched in horror. Sam had never used her attribute in combat before. Now the world would know. Kieran died instantly, his remains branded into the charred grass below. The war had finally come to Alpha Site.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you think.


	5. Revelations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A new path for Marcus. Abby and Roan struggle in a new situation.

Alpha Site

What just happened? It was all he could think over and over again. Marcus had watched the fight with something close to awe, but he never could have predicted an ending so explosive. Sam was standing beside a charred pile of ash without a scratch on her, her breathing calm and steady and her immaculate uniform reflected the light of the Coliseum out into the crowd. She moved to the centre of the arena as Saryn arranged for what was left of Kieran’s body to be cleared from the ground. 

The Coliseum silenced as Sam stood vigil over his passing; a remembrance for a Paladin soldier. Sam hid her anger well but it burned within her to know that Kieran’s life had been wasted by a member of The Eight. Cyrus would pay for his attempt on her life, she just hadn’t figured out how yet. 

Marcus watched as the crowd began to stir. An artificial voice echoed out through the arena listing names in swift sequence. He heard his name as it reflected off the walls back to him. Remembering Saryn’s instructions he rose, and followed a number of others down towards the arena. They filed, at least a dozen of them, one-by-one down a brick stairwell into a small dark corridor, iron sconces lining the walls with purple and blue flames adding light to the dark tunnel. Marcus noticed the fighters from the previous matches recovering on metal bunks along the edge of the passage, alongside the victors who had beaten them. Nias crouched beside a bunk, already healed enough to stand, with the man who defeated him standing beside him graciously handing Nias his shirt and boots, his own uniform replaced to the formal white of the dress uniform Sam was wearing. 

As Marcus passed he noticed the familiar mark of the Paladins on the back of the man’s hand. It was a sight he was getting used to finding on the soldiers, but he wondered whether every soldier on Alpha Site was a Paladin. The man met Marcus’ questioning gaze as he moved to step around the two men.

“You must be Kane,” the man stated as Marcus passed. “Major Caleb Ausin. Alpha Site is all a buzz about you.”

“Nice to meet you. I don’t know why,” Marcus replied. “I haven’t done anything.”

“Yet,” and with the slightest nod Caleb walked towards the arena entrance disappearing into the golden light of the Coliseum. The man’s shaggy hair covered his eyes as he turned, but Marcus thought he winked at him. 

Marcus followed the others through the tunnel and had to shield his eyes briefly when they re-entered the arena. He couldn’t help but stand in awe of the magnitude of the arena, and Saryn was right, it definitely was the best seat in the house. From the lower level you didn’t just get the view of the surrounding seating sweeping around the centre like a whirlpool, but directly above the centre was transparent ceiling with a perfect view of the epicentre of the black hole. He didn’t understand the physics of how a planet or asteroid could exist in geosynchronous orbit along the event horizon of a black hole, but he was finding more and more that things didn’t quite follow the laws of physics here.  
Standing shoulder to shoulder in the centre were Saryn, Caleb, and three others, all similarly dressed in white dress uniform with small differences accentuated on the sleeves of their uniforms. Marcus could only surmise they represented the different branches of command on Alpha Site, each one represented by the similar colour stripes down their arms as the typical uniforms he saw littering the crowd. 

Saryn stepped towards him as he moved to follow the others. “Just follow along, and say yes to whatever happens,” she whispered as he lined up with the others. 

“What’s happening?” Marcus grumbled. 

“You’re being assigned,” Saryn huffed as she hurried back to her position the yellow band evident on her own sleeve indicating her section of command. 

Marcus listened intently as Caleb stepped forward and began to congratulate those that had fought that day, the victories and the losses. Finally, commemorating the passing of a Paladin with a short eulogy to emphasize the sacrifices they make to secure the safety of all of Caryx. Marcus searched Sam’s eyes from her position behind the five others. She stood stiff, feet in a wide stance, arms crossed, and head tilted down as if in respect for the dead, but Marcus could see closer, his vision magnifying the shallow breaths she was attempting to hide. She was furious. 

One by one the others were named to the crowd who roared to life celebrating whatever placement they received whether serving as medics, soldiers, programmers, engineers, or researchers. When Caleb called his name, the arena went as silent as a grave, the entire crowd aware of who he was and waiting with great anticipation to find where he would end up. Marcus didn’t like not being in control of his own choices, but he didn’t know enough to argue currently. 

“Marcus Kane,” Caleb purred as his voice travelled to every corner of the arena. “Firstly, we welcome you as one of our own, and understand the difficulty of being so far from everything you known. With the Colonel’s permission I will accept you as a Paladin. Will you accept?”

Marcus understood the ceremony in all of this, but wondered if this was as much for show as it was to complete a standard task. He searched the four others, finding Saryn’s hopeful gaze as she lifted her eyebrows in the most animated fashion as if to say “Say it you idiot.” It wasn’t Saryn he was trying to figure out though. Behind the other Sam stood fixated on him, her stern look would cause most to wither, but when she gave the most indefinable nod, he understood there was more to this then just a position he would work in. 

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I accept,” he nodded. The crowd exploded into triumphant applause as Caleb stepped close and placed two fingers on the back of his right wrist. His skin tingled momentarily before darker tones swam together to form the twin wings of the Paladins. He was one of them now. Shaking his head briefly, he sighed, as he realized he was resigned to another life as a soldier. 

The crowd began to disperse, the commanders left, and he remained staring blankly at the mark on his wrist. Sam turning to leave, the grass ripping underneath her boots, and her soft steps woke Marcus from his daze long enough to dash after her. 

“Hey, I think we need to talk,” he said barely loud enough for her to here. He couldn’t be sure if anyone else was watching, and didn’t know what exactly was considered a secret where he was concerned.

Sam kept walking. “Not here, not now. Later.” She quickened her pace until he was trailing as she entered one of the tunnels.

“Hey,” he yelled as he grabbed for her arm. She had him spun around and pinned chest to the wall before he knew it was happening.

“Listen very carefully,” she growled pressing her forearm across his back to keep him still. “Things have become much more complicated. Saryn’s waiting for you outside. Go with her. We will discuss this later.” She pressed him further against the wall before letting go and walking away as if nothing had happened. 

Caryx (Origin Planet below Alpha Site)

Abby shuffled along the floor, a blindfold covering her eyes. The freezing stone beneath her bare feet kept her alert, while the damp smell and constant dripping of running water rang loudly off whatever metal structures lined the tunnel around her. She could hear Roan grumbling beside her as they were pushed down one passage after another in an endless labyrinth of twists and turns. A door slid open and she was shoved forward, stumbling briefly before catching herself her hands already fumbling with the blindfold. 

The domed space they were in was dimly lit, barely enough to see each other, but her eyes began to adapt, as she wrestled with the restraints on her wrists. Roan was already free and running his hands along the smooth surface of the wall trying to find the seam where the door would be, but he couldn’t find an edge. The room was flawless, without edge or seem, and without visible details they could use. The only thing they could make out was a curled up figure in the corner. 

Abby moved towards it, while Roan tried to stop her, his hands wrapping around her arms. 

“Wait,” Abby said as she wriggled free of his grip. She stumbled forward, falling to one knee right beside the shaking figure. “Oh no.” She reached out her hand gently brushing aside thick graying curls from his face. Her hand came away damp with fresh blood. “Sinclair?” 

He winced at his own name, burying his head further into his own chest and knees. Abby tore a strip of fabric from her shirt and started dabbing at the laceration stretching across his skull from his brow to his ear. 

“Abby,” he strained out as he finally opened his eyes. Abby had never seen him so scared in his life, but his dark eyes shifted back and forth rapidly from her to Roan, the floor, the ceiling and back, replaying on a vicious loop as if he couldn’t escape it. “You’re not here, you can’t be here.”

“I’m here, it’s me,” she assured him taking both sides of his face in her hands to bring his sight directly to hers. She checked his pupil response, gauged the depth of breath from his chest, and then continued to dab at his head wound. His fingers wrapped one of her wrists, and she realized blood was seeping out of his fingers where his nail beds should have been. His fingers were split from nail to knuckle. “Sinclair, your fingers.”

“They pulled them out,” he wheezed slightly. “When I said I wouldn’t build what they wanted.” Abby watched as the skin began to slowly knit back together. Sinclair writhed and squirmed as the sensation sent a painful shock through his entire nervous system. 

“Who else is here?” She asked.

“I don’t know. You’re the first I’ve seen.”

“Sinclair, how are you here? You died at Arkadia.”

“I don’t know. I can’t remember, anything past that day before waking up here.” He pushed his hands into the ground to push himself up. Standing was difficult at first but it only took a minute for him to find his balance again.

“Strange,” Roan said. “I can’t remember anything after the conclave, but you’ve told me about the bunker, about finding others from space, about leaving Earth. What’s the last thing you remember Doc?”

Abby closed her eyes trying to chase the tears brimming at the edges away. “Marcus. In an airlock,” she choked out. “He’s the last thing I remember before here.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Sinclair rushed. “We have to get out. We have to escape. I can’t do what they want me to.”

“What are you building?” Roan asked. A grinding noise interrupted them as metal gears rolled back another section of the wall. The room seemed to rotate around them until the wall peeled back, opening into a grey room filled to the brim with mechanical equipment, metal, wiring coils, and anything else you could imagine within a workshop. The far side of the room was filled with shelves covered in labelled jars of different chemicals, while dual electronic rods and benches littered the other side. The centre contained standing drill presses, table saws, and metal sheet cutters both automated and manual.

“No, no, no, no,” Sinclair whined as he backed away from the room. Four guards rounded the corner, rifles slung across their chests, and armored from head to toe. Their faces were hidden behind black solid masks buried under the hood that Abby and Roan had worn to steal the canister. 

“Stand,” one ordered. His rifle trained on Sinclair.

“No please,” he whined as he crawled backwards. 

The guard shot once into Roan’s left thigh. The laser bullet searing through and then cauterizing the wound on impact. He dropped holding his hands over the smoking wound. Roan could already feel his skin stitching itself together, but the pain was still present even after the wound has sealed. 

“Stand now,” the guard repeated. The others unlocked their rifles and aimed them at Abby.

“Okay, okay,” Sinclair rushed in front of Abby, his hands outstretched blocking the soldiers aim. “No need for that. I’m coming.”

The soldiers seized Sinclair and dragged him into the room, practically throwing him into a chair in front of two sterling metal rods that blinked to life when he straightened. The rods, placed three feet apart buzzed briefly before emitting small light particles between them, combining to form a holographic computer screen projection complete with a set of schematic designs. 

“So, how long before my weapons are up and running?” The man had entered through the wall beside him, the wall phasing out and solidifying as he passed through. Roan glared upon recognizing their captor from before. The same red and black uniform, slicked black hair, and cold eyes. “I told you I can’t build it. The energy requirements alone…”

“Yes, about that,” he waved to two of his guards who vanished through the wall and reappeared seconds later holding the canister that Abby and Roan had stole. “Are you familiar with fission technology.”

“Theoretically,” Sinclair said. He didn’t like where this was going. Abby moved closer to his side as if trying to stand between him and their captor.

“He’s not doing anything until we get some answers,” Abby said while placing a gentle hand on Sinclair’s shoulder. The attempt at reassurance only made him shy away.

The man moved within spitting distance of Abby, his hands clasped calmly behind his back, as if baiting her to try something. “I thought we understood each other Ms. Griffin. I have the person that each of you cares most about. Fail to follow my directions and they’ll meet a fate worse than death. Or did you forget that. Shall I show you again?” He reached his fingers for her neck and she back away as if fleeing from a snake. 

“Why do you need him to build it?” Roan asked studying the man and mentally recording the position of each guard within the room. “Surely your technology is more advanced than his.”

“Technicalities of technology. Defenses on Caryx track and are sensor sensitive to nano-technology, therefore we need a more primitive device, and although our techs are brilliant they cannot seem to think that rudimentary. It’s why you’re alive, so serve your purpose and you may live a while longer.”

Sinclair looked over the schematics a breath catching in his throat as he realized what he was building. “This much energy contained within a non-polarized casing will eventually destabilize.”

“Yes,” the man said rather matter-of-factly. “I’m counting on it. You have six hours. That should give you enough time.” He spun on his heel and disappeared through the wall, the four guards remaining behind at each corner. 

“Sinclair,” Abby whispered. “What are we building?”

“Based on the design and the energy requirements, I’d say we’re building a very unstable bomb, and with this type of energy it perpetuates itself.”

“What does that mean?” Roan asked.

“We’re looking at an explosion that could span miles,” he responded while the still healing fingers of his right hand twitched. “I can’t do this.”

Abby couldn’t fathom what they had been thrust into, but the only thing she could think about was her daughter. “They have my daughter. Who do they have of yours?”

Sinclair took a deep breath and dropped his head to the desk. “They have my daughter.” He cried. 

Abby gasped. “Raven!”


	6. Truth and Consequence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lots of important details. Truth about the past comes to light.

Alpha Site

Marcus had been shuffled around since he woke up. When he finally was able to stop for a few seconds it was in Saryn’s quarters. The layout was the same as his own, but the walls were covered in elaborate scenic artwork depicting what he could only imagine was the planet below. It seemed to have every ecological environment that Earth had once had, but every image was tinged red and orange as if trying to capture the type of light emitted on its surface. 

Saryn rushed around the room having changed out of her white dress uniform, and into a thin azure chiffon high slit dress. The chest plunged obscenely low and the back was almost non-existent, but she busied about the room giving little thought to the visibility she was giving off. Marcus stood wide-eyed but busied himself focusing on the same view he had from his own quarters. 

“So, where are we going?” Marcus asked.

Saryn brushed her hand over a sensor on the wall and a holographic mirror glinted to life in front of her. She dabbed a pencil shaped device to her lips and they instantly transformed to red. “What do you think Kane? Red or orange?”

Marcus coughed once to clear his throat. “I think something lighter may suit that dress.” He would be foolish not to admit he found her attractive, if only a little overly ostentatious.

“Good eye. It would be interesting to see whether that sort of vision existed before you developed your attribute, but be careful how you use it.” She twisted the device twice, it giving off a click each time as it locked into a new place. She tapped the device to her lips again and a dusty rose frosted her lips with a delicate shimmer. 

“Whose attention are you trying to grab?” 

Saryn smirked over her shoulder, raising her eyebrows suggestively at him. He gulped. “I’m kidding Kane, relax. I’m hoping Nias, or even the Colonel, may actually notice me tonight.”

“They’d be fools not to,” Marcus smiled. His vision faded momentarily, but when it returned it wasn’t Saryn standing in front of him, but Abby. Her hair cascading in ringlets over her shoulders, the same blue dress clinging to her hips, and her delicate fingers brushing the curls back from her face. He choked at the sight, knowing immediately it wasn’t true.

The sudden ache that gripped his chest spanned out making it difficult to breathe. He collapsed onto one knee; his one arm braced against the wall while the other seized the uniform now too tightly clinging to his chest. His breaths came in short gasps, but his heart was racing and his body was racked with uncontrollable shakes. The chills that followed travelled up his spine as if spiders crawling on the nerves themselves.

“Kane what’s wrong?” Saryn rushed to his side, a cloth in hand and a glass of water already prepared. 

Marcus was already counting down in his mind. Deep breath in, slow breath out, repeat. He knew the symptoms. He’d seen them before. He’d never experienced it before, but he’d walked people through it. Grief had a number of ways of manifesting itself, and panic attacks were only one of them. As his breathing and heart rate returned to a steady normal, he pushed himself back into a standing position, Saryn holding him up.

“I’m fine,” he said as Saryn gave him a questionable look. “Really, I’ll be fine.” 

“Look, I can’t imagine all this being easy on you. Maybe you should just go get some sleep.”

“No. I have questions.” Marcus stood straight as if trying to reassure both himself and her that he was fine.

“Ah, the stubbornness of youth,” Saryn laughed. “Maybe you’ll grow out of that some day.”

Marcus chuckled. “Unlikely. I learned it from someone very special to me.”

“Yeah. We have to go.” 

Marcus followed Saryn out, along the common hallway and towards one of the transfer pods. He was used to the process now, but it still stunned him when he opened his eyes in a completely different site on the station. 

The music was blaring loud enough that he could feel it pulsing in his chest, smoke filled the room, and the streams of various coloured lights streaked across the air as if slow motion lasers. The cave of was filled with people dancing, drinking, talking, and generally carrying on celebrating the end of orientation. He couldn’t tell the type of music playing, only that it was loud, heavy base, and a quick electronic beat. Saryn had already disappeared into the crowd, but he wasn’t prepared to follow into the mess of people, not physically or mentally. He searched the space for Sam hoping to be able to speak to her, but couldn’t spot her amongst the hundreds already present. 

Marcus made his way over to a small alcove in the corner and watched, absorbing every bit of information he could from what he saw and heard, ever the student continuing to learn. 

Two hours later he’d managed to try some of the food, drink something that was clearly a stimulant if his wired body had any say in the matter, and still he hadn’t spotted Sam. Saryn had checked on him a few times, encouraging him out to the dance floor where he always escaped back to his hideaway. He needed to focus tonight.

“Kane,” Saryn hollered over the music. “Are you seriously going to hide here all night.”

“Just waiting for the Colonel,” he said as he rubbed his hand over the back of the sigil on his wrist. It still tingled. 

“If she isn’t here yet, she isn’t coming tonight.”

“I need to speak with her.” Marcus leaned closer as if trying to impress the point. Saryn was already tipsy from the various beverages she’d already consumed and whatever else was floating around the dance floor. Marcus spotted Nias, standing two heads above most of the people on the dance floor, as he caught sight of Saryn and began to bulldoze through the crowd to get to her. “Uh Saryn I think that dress did the trick.”

“Huh,” she said as a thick arm wrapped around her waist, lifted her clear off the ground and back onto the dance floor. She laughed but managed to wrestle out of his grip and back to Kane her breath rushing out in excitement. “If she’s not here she’s either in the training hall or the archives. After today I’m betting the archives.” Nias glared at him as Saryn ran back tugging him back onto the dance floor. 

The holo-vid streamed in mid-air in front of her. The waiting message circling at he centre of the blue tinged screen. Sam drummed her fingers against her arm waiting patiently for the call to connect to Caryx and the man she was going to verbally rip a new hole for. Finally, the image focused and Cyrus appeared on the screen, smiling, casual, his hair slick and the same black and red uniform of his station coolly resting against his athletic frame. 

“Colonel Aeges, to what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?” He cooed smiling brightly as if the gesture could mask his dead eyes.

“You know exactly why I’m contacting you Cyrus. What makes you think I won’t make you instantly regret sending a Paladin to try and kill me?”

“I didn’t send him to kill, merely to unseat you.”

“Same thing and you know it. You cost us the life of a Paladin. Even if we bring him back, his clone body won’t be the same. The cells are degrading faster. He might as well be dead.”

“Kieran understood the sacrifice he was making.”

“Do you?” Sam was just holding back. She could have spat venom if that had been her attribute. 

“You haven’t seen Caryx lately. You can’t understand the situation we will face if this problem isn’t resolved.” Sam bit her lip until she tasted blood. The patronizing scum of a man dared to lecture her on the situation they would face. Complete extinction.

Sam resisted the urge to verbally decapitate him. “I’m close to finding a solution. I just need a little more time. The council knows this.”

“The council answers to me now,” he stated. “You really never should’ve left.”

“I’ll remember that.”

Cyrus tapped the screen and two videos and one photo appeared in Sam’s view. The videos were of rebels destroying fetal facilities on Caryx, and the photo was of Marcus Kane. “Caryx is devolving into violence and mayhem, and you hide up on that asteroid with your genome sequencers and unfertilized embryos praying for a miracle that will never come. And then there’s the question of who’s the newcomer?”

Sam was a picture of calm and serenity. It wouldn’t do to tip her hand the way Cyrus already had. “Just a Paladin. We’re trying a new growth matrix to determine if variations in the oocytes prior to fertilization will create a stable genome.”

“Any success yet?”

“Too soon to tell, which is why I ask for a little more time.”

Cyrus disappeared away from the screen for a minute and returned with a file in his hand. “You’ve been working on this problem for a hundred years at this point. What could you possibly find in another week, or month, or year that hasn’t already been tried?”

“Are you more afraid of me failing Cyrus, or succeeding? Either way your tenuous power position wanes when our extinction is off the table. You won’t be able to garner fear anymore.”

“I have a suggestion,” he said. Sam waited unwilling to succumb to his narcissism. “Return to Caryx and stand with The Eight, as you once did.”

“Cyrus, you and I both know that putting the eight of us in one room is monumentally stupid.” She knew there was more to his plan then that. Getting her back to Caryx would make her an easy target.

“It’s a risk, no doubt, but our presence will help to galvanize supporters to our cause.”

“Our cause died long ago,” she sighed. “You had a hand in that.”

“There’s always a chance. You used to say that.”

“I still believe it, which is why I won’t be returning to Caryx without the solution.”

Cyrus shook his head, his thin veil of decorum fading to reveal the cruelty underneath. His lip twitched into a sneer as he opened the file in his hands. “Is there nothing I can say to convince you?”

“No!”

“Perhaps a warning then,” he hushed as three new photos appeared on her screen. “You’ve isolated yourself out there. If anything were to happen, we couldn’t protect you.”

Sam highlighted the photos and drag her fingers along the screen zooming in on the images. The faces she saw she recognized, but not from her memories, from Kane’s. “Are you threatening me Cyrus?”

“No, of course not. You know I don’t make threats.” He smirked.

“Right, you make promises.”

“I always keep them.”

“Well then consider this, you move in any way without the unanimous decision of the council, and I will crush you like a bug.” She smiled this time to make it clear she wasn’t going to take his political maneuvering any longer. “I promise you that.”

“You may regret your choice of candor with me, Sam.”

“You could try for a thousand lifetimes and never manage to scare me. Remember I made you, and I can unmake you.” 

Cyrus’ mask of civility was gone, replaced with a tense grimace that pulled his more gentile features into a horrible visage. “See you soon Sam.” The holo-vid display went dark as the screen fizzled and cleared leaving Sam sitting alone in her dark quarters already contemplating her next move. Trouble would be coming, if it hadn’t already arrived.

The holo-map above his hand led him to a transfer pod, and as he got inside and sealed it, he thought ‘archives’ as clearly as possible. He’d never tried to travel solo yet, but hoped he wouldn’t transmit himself into space. He’d had enough of that for one lifetime. Keeping his eyes open he watched the space around him shatter like glass, then fade into shimmering particles of silver and white. His image reflecting off the millions of tiny particles before they began attaching to his skin, the contact sharp as if they were cutting into his flesh, then the familiar warmth that he’d become accustomed to. With a flash he was blinded, and when he managed to blink away the black dots in his eyes, he found the archives.

The pod let him out in the middle of a grandiose room filled with row upon rows of shelving filled to the brink with books, discs, and some kind of paper-thin film that when he touched came to life like a screen, the words of whatever topic filling the screen. The rows seemed to go on forever as he walked slowly from one end to the other, his boots knocking against the wood paneled floor beneath. At the furthest edge the room’s two walls came together to a point into a small open space where he found Sam sitting on a pillowed couch, head back, and eyes closed with a small circular red light glowing from behind her ear. A small artificial fire glowed dimly at her feet, resting up on top of its metal edge, reflecting the firelight in coiling wisps around the room. 

Marcus finally noticed the two panes of glass on either side of the space, one looking down towards Caryx, and the other out to the black hole. They must have been at the furthest edge of asteroid. It suddenly made him feel a little claustrophobic to think how close he was to the outside vacuum of space. Marcus cleared his throat, but Sam didn’t budge. He didn’t feel like getting thrown across the room, so he casually stepped around her and sat in one of the opposite chairs. 

Sam felt him the moment he stepped out of the pod. An unfortunate side effect of cell-merging was that the primary donator of the cells would always be able to feel the proximity of their recipient, of course she couldn’t tell him that. Marcus was already uncomfortable with the idea of her sharing some of his memories, but to then learn she essentially could feel what he felt and where he was wouldn’t sit well with him. She wondered how long he would let her lay there before finally making a move to wake her. Based on her assessment of him so far, he was a patient man, so it could take a while. She supposed this conversation had to happen some time. 

When Sam opened her eyes she meant to get his attention immediately, but Kane was distracted by a book he’d pulled off the one of the shelves. The soft tones of the music in her ears blocked out everything else, but she knew the moment she moved to turn it off he’d notice and that would be that. Oh well. Sam lifted one hand behind her ear and gently pressed the device de-activating her music. Marcus raised his eyes and met hers.

“You know everything in here can be loaded to any vid-screen,” Sam started. “You don’t have to read them in here.”

“Then why have them?” Marcus asked as he thumbed through the pages. The familiar feel and smell of paper was something he’d been without for so long he’d almost forget the texture of it under his fingers. Smooth and cool and always a reminder of a time when he briefly knew peace. 

“Nostalgia I suppose. They’re from a time before…well, just before.” Sam shook her head and lay back against the couch, her eyes shutting out of reflex.

Marcus leaned forward closing the book between his knees and placing it on the silver table between them. “Are you alright Colonel?”

“Sam please. Let’s say for the next ten minutes I’m technically not your superior officer.”

Marcus glanced at the mark on his right hand. “Yes, about that. You named me a Paladin, why?”

“To save you,” she put it bluntly. Sam knew when it came to the truth she had to be as transparent as possible with Marcus, at least to prevent revealing the few things he couldn’t know yet. “There are those who would want you dead simply for being not of our world, and others that would see you as a threat for what you may help us accomplish.”

“Such as?”

“What do you know about us so far?”

Marcus leaned back. “You have incredibly long lives, you’re immune to disease, and generally you are products of genetic manipulation.”

“Would you like to know why?” Marcus simply nodded. Sam respected his directness, and his thirst to understand. He wasn’t unlike her once upon a time. “It isn’t a pleasant story, and it may change your perception of me.”

“I need to understand. You know the horrors I’ve been through, and yet being here is both terrifying and exhilarating. If I’m to face more of that in the future, then I should know why.”

“Alright. About seven-hundred and sixty years ago a variable virulent plague spread across the entire planet below and wiped out ninety-five percent of the population. Just over twelve billion people. It didn’t matter what was done, the virus kept mutating until the only ones left alive were those who were naturally immune to its genetic material.”

“My god,” Marcus whispered his hand covering his mouth. 

“It was discovered by a group of scientists that we could take that natural immunity an extend it to all other disease. A mutating virus is essentially a changeable blueprint for a genetic structure that could be resilient to all things.”

“Wouldn’t that potentially risk more lives?”

“Yes, it did. We lost hundreds of thousands more trying to stabilize it. Finally, one of scientists, a doctor, decided to test a theory related to recombining the viral DNA with a more primitive branch of our own that had been extinct for hundreds of years at that point. When a species evolves, or adapts, the weaker aspects of that species are eliminated.”

“We had a scientist on Earth who had the same theory, Darwin.”

“Yes, I’ve read him actually.” Marcus stared in disbelief. “We’ve been receiving signals from your Earth for centuries. As soon as radio signals began to pump their electrical information into your surrounding space, the black hole amplified and directed that information to us. You had quite a few brilliant people on your planet, then again you also put complete morons in control of your governing bodies. That our people didn’t understand.”

“It didn’t matter in the end. Earth still burned. Did it work?”

“Apparently. The doctor tested it on themselves to ensure that no one else would die from it, and after a hundred and thirty days in quarantine she emerged as something quite different. It was the first time anyone developed what we call ‘the attribute’. The process was refined and the genetic anomalies stripped to bare minimums, and after it was confirmed to be repeatable the other scientists of the group followed, but the first will always be inherently different because the viral strain in them was pure and unaltered.”

“How do you go from a group a genetically modified people to a planet?”

“War. Unfortunately, a war we’re still fighting to this day. The scientists tried to lobby with the surviving government to allow them to genetically modify embryos first within the mothers directly, and then as technology advanced, external wombs. They saw it as the only way to recover and save our species, ensuring genetic diversity through manual means. It sparked a war over ethics, the Eugenics War. Even with the population continuing to suffer and die from disease and infections, the government wouldn’t budge on their morality. So, the scientists formed a rebel group known as The Eight.”

“The same Eight in power today?” Marcus asked.

“Yes. Although, all of The Eight at this point in time are clones of their original bodies. Well, all save one. You see although our species is now genetically immune to disease, we can still die from injury as you saw today.”

“What’s the average lifespan then?”

“Unknown. There are some who are still alive from those first days. After The Eight took power, the Eugenics programs were introduced worldwide, slowly at first and then every city remaining had a clinic devoted to genetic manipulation at the cellular level. People kept reproducing normally which then sparked another conflict related to choice.”

“You said free will was one of the founding creeds of your species,” Marcus remembered.

“It wasn’t always that way. The Eight eliminated the government structure at the time and they took power completely, enforcing genetic manipulation as the only course for our survival and evolution. Millions more died fighting back until to we were pushed to the brink of extinction.”

“How did you get from there to here?”

Sam exhaled slowly knowing the next thing she said was one of the darker parts of their history. “Forced enslavement. Any pregnant mother was taken and forcibly subdued, her fetus subjected to genetic manipulation, and once the child was born the mother was killed. Those that escaped the eugenics experiment kept trying to fight back. The Eight wiped them out, all of them, without hesitation, or mercy.”

Marcus swallowed. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

“The Paladins were born out of the need to subdue those that fought back. They answered only to the first of The Eight, the doctor who started it all. They served as elite guards, soldiers, assassins, and eventually became the highest position any soldier could attain within the military without being a commander.”

Marcus was breathing heavily. “And you turned me into one of these Paladins.”

“Marcus calm yourself. That was over seven hundred years ago. The demons of the past are long dead. The population grew for a while, but then it was confirmed that although our lifespans were longer, our ability to reproduce was gone. The addition of the recombinant viral DNA into our genetic structure made us infertile.”

“There are no children on Alpha Site,” Marcus said. “I noticed but didn’t understand why. Even Saryn mentioned families, I just assumed I hadn’t seen them.”

“We tried for a long time to fix the problem. Then decided cloning was our best option to sustain until we found another avenue to reproduce and build our population and our people back from the brink. It was only meant to be a temporary solution, unfortunately it has become a more permanent consequence, which I am currently trying to find a way around.”

“Why? It sounds like through cloning you could live forever.”

“No. The cloning process degrades the original cellular DNA over time, regardless of the methods we use to keep it pure. The couple centuries of cloning have resulted in substandard clones with diminished mental capacity and shockingly short life times. The Eight decided that the only way to proceed was to continue refining the cloning process, even though people were only living fifteen years in each cloned body. So now we’re at the brink of extinction again. If I can find the solution here than we may come out of this.”

“Am I a clone?” Marcus asked, not knowing if he really wanted the answer or not. To have another chance at life only to have it ripped away was something he didn’t think he could handle.

“No,” Sam smiled. “You are a hybrid of multiple technologies. I mean it when I say you’re more important then you can imagine.”

“This is a lot more than I was prepared for,” Marcus said as he stood and paced back and forth the twenty feet from window to window. “So, I’m an experiment.”

“Yes,” Sam said barely above a whisper as if it hurt her to say so. “I altered the process to combine organic human tissue that we recovered from your remains with the base genetic structure of a uncloned citizen of Caryx. You may not want to hear this right now, but if it works, you’ll be responsible for saving our species.”

“Maybe your species deserves to die,” Marcus bit the inside of his mouth drawing blood.

Sam met him at the window looking out over Caryx. “I’ve seen your memories Kane, and I know the lengths you went to try to and save your people, over and over again. Would you deny me the chance to correct a mistake?”

Marcus’ furrowed brow twitched as he absorbed everything Sam was telling him. Sam moved to walk away, but he caught her this time and spun her back against the glass. She had a finger-length blade drawn and pressed to the side of his throat before he could stop himself from moving forward. The blood leaked down the metal onto her hand and the collar of his uniform. “Kane please, don’t do this.” Sam never begged a day in her life, but she didn’t want to hurt him.

“Answer this…how old are you?” 

Sam blinked once, closed her eyes and tilted her head back against the glass allowing her blade to fall away from his throat. “Will the answer help you understand?”

“Just tell me,” he said through gritted teeth. 

“I’m eight hundred and eleven years old. I was there at the beginning, and I will see this to its end.” Sam met his eyes with a fiery determination, but all that looked back at her was a horror she wished she’d never see again. 

“You’re the doctor,” he said as if saying it out load would affirm the fact in his mind. He tried to choke out the words but they stuck in his throat as he realized the truth. “You’re the first, and a member of The Eight.” 

“I was. I’ve spent the last few centuries trying to correct a mistake that has both saved and doomed my people. I thought if anyone, you would understand.” Marcus stepped back letting her feet slide back to the ground. 

“The ends justifying the means. Is that the argument you’re going with?”

“I never claimed to want forgiveness for what I helped create. I don’t deserve it, but with your help I may just be able to redeem my people, and should it cost me my life, then so be it. I’ve lived long enough.”

Marcus stared at her, his dark eyes hard and determined, whether to join her or throttle her she couldn’t quite tell. The warring emotions she felt coming from him in waves tasted like metal on her tongue. She could see the imagined fight behind his eyes as he tried to eliminate her, stamp her out of existence, and end the monstrosities he now laid at her feet. The internal battle she watched with fascination as his fingers twitched and flexed while he decided whether or not to strangle her with them. She knew he could never bring himself to do it, but he had to come to that determination on his own or forever feel the guilt of thinking it. 

Sam watched with fascination as his shoulders finally relaxed, he breathed deeply and returned her focused gaze with his own, but this time the crimson eyes that locked her in sight weren’t just a ring, now the entire iris was bright red and searching hers for the tiniest reaction. It was only when she saw the white light reflected in those crimson eyes that she spun around to see the planet below.

“No.” She cried. It shook Marcus from his focus as he glanced past her to Caryx. White plumes of light and dust were erupting into the atmosphere. They could see at least three explosions, bright enough to make them squint as the explosion spread out further. Sam pressed the sensor at the back of her ear. “C&C come in.”

“Yes Colonel,” a voice came through the archive communication system.

“I need to know exactly how many of those explosions are on Caryx immediately.”

“Sensor data coming in now Colonel,” the tech said. “There are six explosion sites Colonel. Should we contact The Eight?”

“No, not yet. Summon all section commanders to observation now.”

“Yes Colonel.” 

Marcus studied her reactions carefully before speaking. He knew it was something drastic, and explosions were never a good sign. “What’s going on Sam?”

“We’re at war, and Cyrus is making his move. He just destroyed every major cloning facility on the planet. Now the only one left in existence is here on Alpha Site.”

“Then he’ll be coming for us next,” Marcus acknowledged. 

“Yes.”


	7. Ghosts from the Past

_Alpha Site_

Sam was already in mid-sprint when Marcus snapped out of his daze and ran after her. She dodged through the shelves of books, her feet light against the floor, as she spotted the transport pod at the entrance to the Archives.

“C&C come in,” Sam shouted. 

“Yes Colonel,” a voice responded through the communications node in her neck.

“I’m in transit now,” Sam said as she waved Marcus into the pod with her. “Prepare to shutdown the transit system as soon as we arrive.”

“Understood Colonel.”

The transport pod whirred to life, the familiar sensations taking over them. Marcus could feel something had changed in Sam. Their was a calm to her breathing and demeanor, but under the surface bubbled an undeniable rage that mingled around them electrifying the air. Marcus blinked and they were standing in C&C. Sam pushed him out of the pod and practically threw him into a chair positioned in front of one of the analysis stations.

“Stay,” she barked making sure to meet his eyes as if to dare him to say anything. He frowned but raised his hands in mocked surrender.

“Colonel,” Saryn called as she bolted from the other side of the room. “We have twenty-seven signals incoming. If we close the transit system…”

“I’m aware Lieutenant,” Sam glared at her. “Shut it down now.”

“Yes ma’am,” Saryn yielded. She typed furiously into her data pad and then inserted it into the main console. A string of code appeared across the holographic screen now hiding the black hole from view. A blinking icon flashed at the bottom of the lines of code awaiting final verification. Sam marched to the console and without any hesitation typed her command code into the system, each finger punching the surface of the screen on the console. A single word, confirmed, flashed briefly on the screen before a schematic of Alpha Site took its place showing the systematic shutdown of every transport pod on the station.

“Record their names from the pattern buffers,” Sam instructed the other comm techs in the room. “I want to know who I just killed.” 

Marcus looked up at that, a confused expression furrowing his brow as he realized what just happened. The incoming signals were people, and with nowhere to go their bio-signals would be scattered effectively killing them the second the transport pods had been shutdown. He stood, but in that instant couldn’t think of anything to say as Sam watched the last transport pod power down. 

Behind them the doors to Command and Control slid sideways as the section commanders Marcus had met not a few hours before stepped forward. Saryn began handing them data pads with the updated information from the surface they’d already scanned, and the report of the recent insurgence attempt. Marcus stood off to the side waiting, watching, and learning as much as possible from the short exchanges between the commanders. Caleb and Sam spoke in a language Marcus couldn’t recognize, as if they were purposely keeping information from the others present. It was suspicious, but there was no telling what exactly was happening yet, except that Marcus was once again trapped between two opposing forces, thrust yet again into another civil war.

Caleb marched to a console, typed his own command code, and pressed a single green button that appeared on the screen. A loud beep was heard throughout all of Alpha site as Caleb’s calm voice roared over the internal communications channel. “Attention all military personnel, report to the Coliseum immediately. Sergeant Nias, report to C&C.”

“Excuse me Colonel,” Saryn said as she maneuvered in between Sam and another of the commanders deep in conversation. “I’m receiving a lot data being sent from the surface.”

Sam cracked her knuckles. It was a habit she’d been trying to break for centuries, but it always reappeared when she fought. “Are they bio-signals?”

“No Colonel. They’re external reports from the surface, and they don’t look good.” Saryn tapped away until the holo-screen blinked to life before them playing an audio file from the surface. The video footage fizzled into view but all that was visible was a green and red aura surrounding where the reporter stood. They all fell silent as a grave.

_“Reporting from outside the capital. There are several fires ripping through the city as rebel forces have overcome the home guard. They’ve taken the Palace where the Eight were secluding themselves in session before the first explosions hit. At this time, we have no knowledge as to whether they have survived the occupation of the Palace. There are bodies already beginning to pile up in the streets.”_

The man’s voice struggled to choke out the words as smoke filled the screen around his blurred image. He shouted above the noise of combat as lasers filled the sky above him shooting down flight craft and any opposing forces. Saryn typed away furiously trying to clean up the incoming code to clear the picture, but when she did the collective gasp in the room would have stolen breath from anyone. The city behind the blood soaked and dust covered reporter wasn’t just on fire, it was decimated and in ruins. The buildings that weren’t demolished to rubble were scorched from the massive explosions brought on by Cyrus’s bombs. 

_“We’re just getting word from the Palace now; it is confirmed The Eight have been executed. We have a holo-vid on site, and we’re linking them now.”_

The screen split to reveal the Palace. A massive stand alone building, with four obsidian towers at its furthest corners, at least four floors that were left intact, whereas the upper section of what used to be an elegantly carved roof was blown clear off as cinders still smoked from the lumber within. The metallic frames warped as the extreme heat from the flames cracked the support beams, and without warning the entire remnants of the roof collapsed on any survivors left in the building. 

_“We can hear the screams from survivors. Many have taken to the streets as their homes burn and fall around them, but with no aid in sight they are being gunned down. Please, anyone, if you can hear us, send help. They’re killing us…”_

The signal cut off as shots ran over the reporter’s head. Sam closed her eyes, pressing her fingers to the bridge of her nose, as she tried to block out the final scream that wailed through the audio feed. While the others stood frozen in silence, Sam marched to the console and began to pull up frames of the footage they’d just watched. The audio began to replay in the background, but Saryn hurried to mute it before being forced to listen to the harrowing report again. 

Sam isolated three frames of the footage, highlighted, and zoomed in on the entrance seven arches of the Palace prior to its collapse, and there, swinging from secured posts were six beheaded bodies with a symbol carved into each of their chests. Sam zoomed in further, and in that moment it took everything in her not to smash her fists through the console, as crimson blood snaked its way over the carved image of a fern leaf. Cyrus’s sigil, and an image that Sam would never be able to sleep again without seeing. 

Sam took several shallow breaths. “Major, ensure all military personnel report to the Coliseum as instructed.” He nodded and strode out of C&C. “Lieutenant, I want our holo-system secured completely from the surface. Isolate everything onto our separate server. Nothing comes in that I don’t see first.”

“Yes Ma’am.”

Nias ran through the as the doors parted. He stopped abruptly seeing all the section commanders present, and the concern look that started at his eyes spread across his face as he found Saryn’s panicked expression.

“Sergeant Nias,” she said as he stood a little straighter. “You are to escort Paladin Kane to the Coliseum and stay by his side at all times.” Nias grumbled. “At all times Sergeant, understood.” He nodded but did not look too pleased as he sent a glare across the room at Marcus.

Sam moved slowly from the console to a wall off to the side. Marcus moved to follow her, but Nias blocked his path holding him in place before he dragged him towards the hall. Marcus knew there was no point in attempting to fight Nias, but he watched carefully as Sam typed a code into a touchscreen keypad in the wall. His eyes turned red as his attribute came to life. He was learning more and more about the feeling and the ability it gave him as his vision enhanced the five-symbol combination she inputted. He filed the information away, knowing it would come in use at some point. 

Sam looked to be a picture of calm, but inside her emotions were in turmoil, and Marcus could feel it. Worry, grief, anger, and uncontrollable sorrow. He didn’t know how, but there was more to this experiment he was a part of then she was telling him, and after this summons to the Coliseum was complete, he intended to find out once and for all. Now he just needed to figure out a way to ditch his overgrown bodyguard.

_Caryx (Origin Planet below Alpha Site)_

Abby couldn’t sit still. They’d completed the bombs on schedule, and had no idea what their captor was going to do with them, but Sinclair had explained that the short shelf-life of the canister stability meant that he’d probably be deploying them within the hour after they had finished. 

Nothing could have prepared the three for the shockwaves that shook the planet. The facility they were in was underground, that much they knew, but the foundation walls around them cracked when the first wave hit. The deafening rumble and blast of the first explosion ripped a fissure through the floor beneath them that spanned the length of the room. The chasm that opened beneath spewed a superheated sulfuric fog into the room that left them gasping for breath as soldiers dragged Abby, Sinclair, and Roan from their prison and into a secure medical bay. Fresh air circulated the space as the vents and fans spun to life above them. 

Their lungs burned as they coughed up putrid flesh burned off from the inside of their throats. Roan gagged and retched as yellowish slime with chunks of his own lungs came vomiting out of his mouth. Abby flipped him and Sinclair on their sides as the men hurled repeatedly. She took a quick scan of the room and found what resembled a ventilator, but when she jumped to grab it the soldier closest to her elbowed her it the gut, kicked her feet out from her, and pressed his knee into the middle of her back. 

“Move and you die,” he snarled and ground his knee into her spine. Abby cried out but was soon relieved when his weight was suddenly gone. The soldier was sent sailing across the room by a sudden audible blast that vibrated the very air around them. Abby choked as she expanded her lungs back into place. A fair-haired soldier knelt and helped her to her feet, while sliding the breathing device and its control pad towards her. She took them hesitantly but moved quickly once the device was turned on. 

The thrown soldier peeled himself off the floor, rubbing the back of his head and pulling away a hand covered in blood.  
“Sir, I…” he began.

“No excuses. If Cyrus wanted them dead, they’d be dead. Touch them again without my expressed permission and I’ll hang you like the lot above us.” The soldier back away and stood at the door his back to them as if he could hide the embarrassment.

Abby fussed with the device until she realized it didn’t have an attachment for the mouth, but rather a large flexible glass tube attached to a fine point needle. She analyzed the equipment and then realized what it was, plunging one of the attachments directly through Roan’s chest, and another through Sinclair’s. The men wheezed briefly as air re-inflated their collapsed lungs before their breathing began to slow and return to normal. Abby secured the tube to both their chests before standing and practically charging at the man who’d helped her, all thoughts of being meek far flung behind her.

“What the hell kind of operation are you running here, where your subordinates can torture prisoners at will?” Abby was tired of holding back with these men. Every thing they were doing sickened her, but she wasn’t going to stand and take it anymore. “Where is your commander?” The soldier just smirked as his eyes raked over her figure still dressed in the combat black fatigues and tank top that they’d come back from their mission in. 

He tapped the comm’s unit behind his ear, the smirk never leaving his clean-shaven face. It irritated Abby how neat and straight he was. It reminded her too much of Kane on the Ark, but the emotion quickly shifted from annoyance to sorrow as the thought of Marcus made her stomach flip. 

“Sir,” he said the grin still plastered to his face as Abby seethed at him. “Ms. Griffin would like a word with you.” Abby listened intently for the response. 

“Bring her to the lab. In one piece please Tanis,” the voice crackled over the comms. The soldier glanced at the two men still laying on the floor.

“And the others sir?” He asked. 

Abby interjected before the answer could come through. “Where I go, they go. Clear.” Tanis pursed his lips together trying to hold his rapacious grin at bay. Abby had seen that look before on some of the other soldiers, and usually Roan ended up standing between her and them, but she was on her own in this moment, and the man before her made her recoil in disgust.

“You heard sir,” the comms crackled awaiting a response. “Permission to escort three prisoners to the research lab.” There was an absolutely agonizingly long pause as Abby looked towards Roan and Sinclair, not wanting to leave the two injured and alone in the hands of these men. She had two allies and she wasn’t going to lose them.

“Granted,” Cyrus said.

Tanis and three other soldiers helped Sinclair and Roan to their feet while Abby slowly removed the six-inch needle from between their ribs. Roan didn’t make a sound, but Sinclair couldn’t help but hiss as the cold metal scraped against the inside of one of his ribs. Sinclair paid extra care to stay as far away from Tanis as possible. He whispered to Abby as they were moved through an underground labyrinth of tunnels, that it was Tanis who had been the instrument of his interrogation. The man seemed to take a sadistic pleasure in causing pain, and Sinclair had born the brunt of it. Abby kept the warning close to the surface of her mind. They were in dangerous ground, not uncommon given their history, but she still felt unsteady, as if a side to her was somehow missing. 

Abby tried at first to track their whereabouts as they were shuffled through various hallways and alcoves, first made of metal then rough-hewn stone, but as she glanced to her right she noticed Roan keeping a careful watch as well. If anything, between the two of them they might be able to determine a map of the place and escape. Another ramshackle work in progress, she thought, as they rounded a corner and all thoughts of escape quickly vanished.

Looking out with despair Abby stopped in front of an exit to the surface that was just being cleared of the rubble from the recent explosions. Abby could see the towering infernos of flames and ash that were burying the remnants of what might have once been a city. She couldn’t tell for sure, but the one thing she knew for certain is that she, Sinclair, and Roan had been the architects behind the explosions, and that guilt ripped through her chest as a knife through butter. She seized her chest and leaned against the wall as uncontrollable sobs wracked her body. Abby ran her fingers into her hair, scratching at her scalp until it bled. 

She felt a warm fingers wrap around her arm and lift her into a gentle embrace. Sinclair held her close as she choked out raspy sobs and soaked the front of his shirt. 

Tanis cleared his throat. “That’s enough, please,” he scolded. “We’re nearly there. Take this if you need it, but no more tears.” He gently placed an azure silk handkerchief over her balled up fingers and walked around the corner. Sinclair physically pulled Abby away from Tanis as he leaned in. 

The soldiers prodded at their backs until they followed. Sinclair didn’t let go of Abby until she finally released his shirt and let him know she was okay. She wasn’t, but it was just part of the long list of crap she felt she still needed to atone for, whether those atrocities could be laid at her feet or not, the guilt still weighed on her. 

When the turned another corner, Tanis was leaning casually at the side of an open doorway. They walked slowly, but Abby had regained her composure, raising her head high. An old phrase repeating in her head again and again, raise your head and your eyes will follow. The light from the room was blinding as they entered, but as soon as her eyes adjusted, she discovered why.

She had to look down into the lab from the three-story high stairwell that connected the entrance to the ground level. The lab was row upon row of metal tables reflecting the light from fluorescent overhanging fixtures. Abby inhaled sharply as her eyes widened. She tried not to be impressed but it was difficult. On each table were machines and equipment she couldn’t put a name to but most resembled genetic sequencing devices. There were refrigeration units spanning the far wall of the room that could’ve fit a football field, and each one seemed filled to the brim with samples, plants, and other organic substances. 

When they reached the bottom of the stairwell, Cyrus was waiting for them, his typical uniform buried underneath a navy-blue lab coat. 

“Thank you for joining me Ms. Griffin,” he said as if it was his idea. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

Abby, still slightly stunned by her surroundings, came to the realization that although she’d asked for the meeting, she had been too distracted to determine what she was going to say. She took the pause the plan her thoughts, but Cyrus seemed to be watching her with great interest. 

“If we are to continue to be treated as prisoners then you must abide us being treated properly as prisoners of war, and since we have done as you asked,” she swallowed thinking to the devastation on the surface, “There is no need to brutalize us.”

Cyrus laughed outright. “Well said Doctor. I agree with you. Tanis will ensure that you are treated fairly.”

“Thank you,” Abby replied.

“While you’re useful.” Abby paled as dozens of soldiers seemed to appear from the walls, the stairs, and the far side of the room. “Let’s make something perfectly clear here. I admire your fortitude, however should I wish it I can have you killed, or kill you myself for that matter, without a second thought.”

Abby already knew this was coming. This she was prepared for. “If you wanted to us dead you would have killed us already.” She responded, parroting back the words Tanis had used earlier. Tanis’ lip twitched as Abby’s back straightened a little further sending a stubborn side glance straight at him. “I don’t know how we got here, or what you want from us…”

Cyrus lifted a finger and cut her off before she could continue. “I want your assistance with a project I’m working on. I was a scientist once, but my goals lie elsewhere, and I’ve been lucky in my allies to have found dozens of wonderfully clever minds that may be able to aid my cause. Such as yourselves.”

“Not by choice,” Abby bit back.

“Maybe not, but what I can offer you is beyond any typical payment you could ever receive. Now that we control the capital and all its resources, we can upgrade the nanotech in your bodies. I’m sure they’re feeling a little sluggish. But more than that. I have something you’ll appreciate.”

“Doubtful,” she said. 

“Come with me,” he waved as he sauntered towards a large garage style metal door. He pressed his hand to a screen, looked into an ocular piece, and placed his wrist inside a small cylinder that pierced his skin drawing a single drop of blood that immediately sealed. Abby watched with both interest and fascination, and Cyrus noticed. “Security protocols with the Eight were always the highest in regards to their research. Biometrics and nanocyte analysis were the only way to ensure no one could steal our work.”

The metal from the frame squealed as it ground away at the stone surrounding it, lifting into an overhang above the entrance. Cyrus waved Abby forward and the internal lights flickered to life responding to her presence. Abby’s hands flung to her mouth as she cried. Inside the domed elongated tunnel were twin upper and lower rows of what looked like dozens of stasis pods. She ran to the nearest one and the dim glowing lights inside brightened revealing a sleeping dark haired tanned skinned woman. 

“Raven, “Abby beamed with joy. She pulled the data pad from the side of the pod and looked over her stats quickly analyzing the figures she understood and scanning over the ones she didn’t. Raven was healthy, unharmed in any way, and from the evidence given seemed to be sleeping peacefully in stasis. Sinclair rushed to the pod plastering his hands against the side of the glass and salty tears tracked lines down his cheeks. 

Abby turned briefly to see Cyrus smiling brightly at her. If she didn’t know him for what he was capable off, he almost would have seemed charming. Well as charming as a serial killer maybe. Cyrus chuckled to himself, but stopped when he pointed to the pod opposite Ravens. Abby’s breath hitched as she slowly walked towards it. The pod glowed and Abby nearly collapsed as her daughter’s blonde semi-curled hair framed her gentle face beneath the glass. She pulled at the data pad and checked the same stats as she had with Raven. Healthy and in stasis, and otherwise unharmed. It was the happiest she’d felt in a long time. 

She was content to simply stand there basking in the presence of her daughter’s sleeping form, but such peace couldn’t last forever. Sinclair understood some of the engineering jargon they were using that she didn’t, and he seemed visibly concerned. 

“Abby, they’re sleep patterns and EEG readings don’t look completely normal to you, do they?” He asked it as he placed Raven’s pad in her hand. She scrolled through the data and found nothing unusual for someone in their state. Until she realized why Sinclair was concerned. The data didn’t read like someone sleeping in a coma or in stasis, it read like a patient who was brain dead. They had no higher brain functions. 

Abby was about to confront Cyrus, when Roan bumped the second pod beside Clarke and it came to life. Abby’s heart stopped at the sight. She pushed Sinclair aside and pressed as close to the glass as she could.

“You see Ms. Griffin, there is much I can offer you,” Cyrus smiled as he backed out of the room leaving Tanis behind. 

Abby couldn’t speak. Every thought, every memory, every emotion in her mind was swirling like an onset of a hurricane. It physically hurt as the pressure in her chest grew until she realized, she wasn’t breathing. 

“Who is it?” Roan asked.

Sinclair had managed to regain his balance after Abby almost knocked him down. He stood beside her and his jaw might as well have hit the floor. 

“Oh my god, Abby, it’s Jake.”


	8. Grieving

_Caryx (Origin Planet below Alpha Site)_

Abby bolted from the room, her heart pounding in her ears as she reached for Cyrus. Tanis seized her arm and twisted it high up onto her back, but she struggled relentlessly until her shoulder begged to pop. 

“What have you done to them?” She cried. Two soldiers emerged through the walls already lining up Roan and Sinclair in their sights. Cyrus sat down at a desk and resumed his work practically ignoring Abby’s frantic cry.

“I haven’t done anything,” he smiled. “They’re safe.”

“They’re in a vegetative state,” she fought through the tears that welled in her eyes. “There’s no coming back from that.”

“You of all people should know that technology can accomplish wonders. You brought back the man you loved from death. Now you can do so again.” Cyrus submerged his palm into a grey gelatin matrix within the desk and a holographic image of an electrical cluster no bigger than a grape sparked to life in front of her. “Let her go Tanis. She can’t help if she doesn’t understand.”

Tanis released her wrist, but his hand slid to the weapon on his hip, ever watchful. Cyrus’ fingers moved within the matrix and the small golden cluster expanded revealing more then Abby was prepared for. The images that cascaded before her eyes were all of her youth on the Ark with her family on Unity Day, sitting in classes for Earth skills, and studying on the observation deck while her friends talked about what Earth would be like. She watched as her life flashed before her eyes. Meeting Jake at her first dance, Clarke taking her first steps in the halls of the Alpha Station, council meetings arguing with Jaha and Marcus, more with Marcus…Marcus. Even with Jake lying not twenty feet from her, her mind kept swinging back to Marcus. Jake may have been her husband, she loved him for sure and her life before was a good one, but Marcus was the love of her life, and seeing him grow before her eyes was painfully eye opening. 

“What is this?” Abby said choking back the tears as she steadied herself.

Cyrus pulled the image back to reveal a neurocluster of neurons, then further through their electrical pathways unfolding like a city highway until a human brain took shape before her. Abby stepped inside the image lifting her fingers to touch a small glowing cluster of neurons. They blinked to life and she felt the shock travel through her arm to her entire body. Abby’s eyes clenched shut but the image behind them burned itself into her memory. The image of her waking up inside a stasis pod, dazed and confused, starving and cold, but all the while searching for something to grasp on to. 

Cyrus stepped into the image with her. “It’s you Ms. Griffin. These are your neural pathways, your memories, your very personality.”

“How?”

“We acquired a great number of minds, or should I say pieces of them, from an unwilling resource. Some are more complete than others, but our algorithms prove to be near perfect in their recreations, filling in the blanks and extrapolating results in order to predict behaviour patterns, mental acuity, psychological profiles, you get the idea. We were able to generate your mind to ninety-eight percent accuracy. I apologize if some memories are missing, but you won’t know if they are anyway.”

“Abby,” Sinclair said as he approached them. “They’re empty shells like computers awaiting software.”

“And our minds are the software,” Abby filled in. Sinclair nodded. Abby turned to Cyrus and locked a feral gaze onto him. “Wake them up, now.”

“Your demands are unnecessary,” he sneered. “I intend to, or at least some of them. You see you’re going to help me win this war, and when it’s done the work you do here will ensure my people continue to survive, and yours.”

Abby wrung her hands thinking through the conditions of the agreement. She’d already fought through several wars to save her people. What was one more? “What do you need me to do?”

“Us,” Sinclair interjected nodding towards Abby. He placed a gentle hand on her shoulder, reassuring as always. 

Cyrus moved to the desk and manipulated the matrix to reveal a triple-helix DNA pattern which spanned out above them coiling and contracting as if trying to fill in the visible gaps in the sequence. Abby and Sinclair followed the movement tracing the unknown elements from their origins to where sections seemed ripped away. “I need you to repair this DNA sequence. The technology of this lab and all the knowledge of the nanocytes in your body will help you, but you should know there is a deadline.”

“This type of research could take years,” Sinclair said as he spun the coil of genetic material. 

“Centuries in fact,” Cyrus huffed. “No matter, you have ten days.”

“That’s impossible,” Abby said as she scrolled through another holographic screen with lists of nitrogenous base components. 

“Improbable perhaps, but nonetheless that is your deadline, both literally and figuratively.” Cyrus waved his hand over the console and the images faded. 

Roan had crept up beside them attempting to maneuver into Tanis’ blind spot, but as he came within range he noticed the weapon once at Tanis’ side already drawn and a small beam targeting the centre of his chest. “I don’t like threats,” he growled. 

“Neither do I. They’re a waste of time, nevertheless ten days is your deadline, and it isn’t an arbitrary number. Your bodies are already breaking down. The nanotech within them will function at peak efficiency repairing organ failure and synaptic firing, but in ten days they will degrade with the rest of you.” 

“What is he talking about?” Roan asked. 

“Surely you have some idea already,” Cyrus laughed. “You aren’t on Earth anymore. You aren’t on Sanctum anymore. You aren’t even human anymore.”

Abby thought through waking up in the pod. Her last memory of Marcus in the airlock, and then nothing. She had no other memories after that point. “We’re clones,” Abby answered. “It’s the only explanation that makes sense.” 

“Well done,” Cyrus said. “Ten days, that’s your timeframe.”

“What happens in ten days?” Roan asked as he pushed past Tanis to stand nose to nose with Cyrus. 

“We attack our enemy, and your bodies run out of time, unless you’ve found a way to stabilize them.” Cyrus moved to leave as soldiers entered standing post at the entrance. He strode up the stairs, skipping three at a time with ease, before reaching the entrance.

“Cyrus,” Abby yelled. “One thing doesn’t make sense. Where did get our minds?”

He smiled. “I suppose you’ll find out in ten days, if you survive that long. You’d better get to work.” He moved to leave then stopped. “Tanis.”

“Yes sir.”

“Wake the first batch, and start their training. We need to replenish the ranks.” Tanis nodded and Abby watched as he moved towards the stasis chamber. She shifted to follow him but two guards stood in her path as the door sealed behind him. Her last thought wandering to whether Marcus was somewhere in there as well. 

_Alpha Site_

Sam sat at her desk; a three needled wire injected into her left wrist as a blank holoscreen shimmered in front of her eyes. The nanocytes in her body electrified her body as the connection was made and Cyrus’ smirking face appeared.

“I didn’t know if you’d take the call,” she said.

“I’m not surprised you’d attempt contact this way,” he responded. “I suppose it makes sense, isolating all of Alpha Site from the network ensures your dominion there.”

“Cyrus, how many of our people did you kill today? Do you even know?” Sam bit the inside of her lip as she thought of the thousands that lie dead beneath the rubble on Caryx. The taste of blood on her tongue, the dry iron filling her mouth, brought a sobering reality back into view. Cyrus wouldn’t stop.

Cyrus smiled. “Too little and not enough, but it’s a start.”

“Your insane,” she breathed through a clenched jaw. 

“No, I’m right,” he shouted through the link. “All these years you’ve been fighting to save our people. Save them from what, themselves. The reason the plague nearly wiped us out was our own ignorance, our own arrogance that we could keep the weakest in our population alive. Their genetic weakness passed down through generations subtracting from the whole until our entire species was nearly brought to its knees. I’m correcting that mistake.”

“You know I’ll stop you,” Sam spoke barely above a whisper. “The Paladins on Caryx will never follow you.”

“The Paladins no longer exist.” Cyrus paused as he watched Sam’s expression fall.

“You lie.” She couldn’t hide her disbelief. “There are forty thousand Paladins on Caryx.”

“And now there are none,” he sneered. “I warned you, and now you’ll regret all those times you ignored me. Bellum internecinum is coming.”

“You would exterminate your own people…”

“To save my people,” he interrupted. “I’m coming for you Sam. Leave the light on for me.”

Sam seized the needles from her wrist and yanked them clear from her body not caring for the stream of blood that splattered across the desk. It couldn’t be true. She pulled up the planetary sensors and swept the entire population grid searching for the tell-tale signal of the Paladins. Nothing. It was true, and Sam felt her heart break. 

The Coliseum was a buzz with life. Fifteen thousand people on Alpha site, five thousand of them soldiers, four hundred of them Paladins, and all waiting, huddled snugly together as they all managed to fit inside the Coliseum seating. 

Marcus was seated with his back to a pillar while Nias blocked the aisle with his body. Marcus still couldn’t tell if he was acting as a jailor or a guard, but his instincts told him he was serving as both. Nias watched the crowd anxiously awaiting what would happen next. By the conversation around them, Marcus could tell this was a gathering that had never happened before.

Marcus noticed as a hushed aura snaked its way around the crowd. The roaring discussions that echoed off the ceiling of the Coliseum were at all at once both loud and silent, until nothing else could be heard but the respective breathing of the entire arena. Marcus felt her before he saw her. The gnawing ache in his gut translating to his limbs until he felt like he was going to be sick. 

Sam marched out of the tunnel, striding with purpose towards the centre of the arena, the black uniform of the Paladins she wore absorbing the light around it, shimmering almost like the black hole above them. Marcus looked to Nias first, clearly focused on Sam, before he looked back and activated his eyes. She appeared as still water, but the raging torrent underneath felt like volcanic fire behind his eyes. He had to look away as tears filled his eyes. When he looked back Sam was staring right at him. She knew.

Nias glared at him briefly before shaking his head. Marcus didn’t understand the connection, but he knew it was there, and that was alarming enough. He listened intently as Sam raised one hand to silence the crowd completely.

“Many of you have heard rumors of the horrible circumstances happening on Caryx. I’m here to inform you that it is all true.” Marcus expected outrage or questions but there were none, just a soundless wave that seemed to strike the voice from all in attendance. Whether it was shock, or a sense of foreboding that kept them silent he wasn’t sure, but as he looked at the faces around him, these trained soldiers who, for some, had been fighting for centuries, he could tell that whatever Sam was about to say next would change the landscape of an entire people.

“As of this morning a successful coup by the rebels saw the Eight executed, tens of thousands dead or dying, and many of our cities left in ruin. I know you will be wanting to know about your families as soon as possible, and section commanders will receive a casualty report within the hour, but as of now all communication to the surface is shutdown until this situation is resolved.”

The room was beginning to grumble with hushed questions. Marcus could make out a few from those surrounding him. Who launched the attack? What were the forces on Caryx doing to fight back? What now? He knew the answers. Marcus started to open his mouth when he caught Nias’ fierce gaze, and his customary shake of his head, as if to tell him not to say a word. Marcus was learning more and more about the man. He may have seemed a brute, but there was a tenacious loyalty to Nias that Marcus had rarely known in his life. 

“We have all suffered losses with these attacks, and when we have re-taken our home from Cyrus and his ilk, they will pay dearly for what they’ve done. As of tomorrow, combat readiness drills will be run continually. We will not rest or stand idle while a tyrant destroys our home. They outnumber us a hundred to one, but we must win. You are aware the transport system has been shut down, which gives us just ten days before they can launch an attack on us directly. Report to your section leaders, and rest tonight, for tomorrow we prepare for war. Dismissed.”

Sam began to walk towards the tunnel before a lone voice in the crowd hollered over the din. “What of the Paladins on Caryx? Are they still fighting?” Sam met the eyes of the redheaded woman standing one foot on the edge of the arena. The Coliseum hushed around her as others waited for the response. 

Marcus felt it before he saw it. The symbol on the back of his right hand began to glow a brilliant orange from under his skin, but not just his. As he looked around the Paladins scattered through the crowd all stood as the mark branding each of them shone like a small sun. Nias stood beside him, and gestured for Marcus to do the same. Marcus had become accustomed to being thrown around, tugged, pulled, and generally treated like a doll around Nias, but this was different. Nias simply tapped his shoulder and waved for him to stand. 

Sam placed her clenched glowing fist, over her heart and spoke to the crowd with a quiet courage Marcus had seen once before in another commander. “Our brothers and sisters, our sons and daughters on Caryx have fallen.” The collective wail of the crowd broke the silence as people grabbed onto those around them for support. 

Marcus was caught off guard as Nias large hand sunk into his shoulder as he caught himself from falling back into his seat. “Sergeant are you alright?” Marcus asked as he helped Nias rebalance himself. Marcus’ wide-eyed expression could’ve been from a dozen things that day, but seeing this gorilla of a man brought low by that news would definitely stay planted in his mind. Nias nodded, keeping his right fist against his chest.

“Thank you,” he whispered in a low gravely voice Marcus thought he’d missed at first. Marcus couldn’t help but lift a crooked half-smile at the development, but it quickly vanished as the impact of what was happening hit him. People on Caryx lived for hundreds of years, knew each other for hundreds of years, but more than that they assumed they could just be brought back, but with the cloning facilities on Caryx destroyed they would have to learn to grieve after having never had to. Marcus winced at the thought as the people he’d lost flashed before his eyes. 

“Yu gonplei ste odon,” Marcus spoke softly. The language came back to him as naturally as drinking water. Nias met his gaze, questioning the phrase. “Your fight is over.” Marcus explained, while placing a gentle hand on Nias’ shoulder. 

The Coliseum began to rumble as soldiers stomped their feet into the stone floor. Marcus finally understood why when he found Sam at the centre of the arena, her entire body glowing translucent as red waves of energy flowed beneath her skin. Her fist held high in the air as she shouted for all to hear in a language Marcus couldn’t understand.  
“Sergeant, what is she saying?” He asked, still not sure if he would get an answer.

Nias waited before releasing a long sigh. “It’s the first language of our people. It doesn’t translate easily.” The crowd began to echo her words louder and louder until the very room was shaking. “She’s saying ‘Paladins rise. We’re the rebels now.’” 

The Paladins around the room, one by one, raised their fists into the air, punching the air as if it could send their anger to the surface below. Marcus moved to follow Nias’ example when he noticed it wasn’t just his fist glowing anymore. The skin on his arms began to pale as the embers of the energy underneath shone through. He punched his fist into the air and the concussive force of the energy he released exploded throwing the dozen or so people around him off their feet. Nias stood, eyes transfixed to Marcus, with an expression akin to shock and awe plastered on his face. 

Marcus wasn’t even aware of the others around him. His eyes were glued to Sam, as hers were to him, and just ever so slightly as his vision magnified her face, he could see the tears she was fighting against well in her eyes. His chest ached with the sight as he felt the depth of her sorrow wash over him. The moment may be there for all to see, but he felt only the two of them could feel it. She’d lost someone, and he knew it. The guilt drowned him beneath wave upon wave of pain until he realized it wasn’t her pain he was feeling anymore. It was his, and looking from the inside out he finally understood what Abby must have felt watching him die. With that, the dam broke and all the grief he’d been holding back swallowed him whole.


	9. Lost in Memory

_Alpha Site: T – 10 Days_

The Coliseum had emptied slowly, the wailing cries of those grieving their loved ones echoing through the stone tunnels of the asteroid. There was no escaping the pain that would wash over all of them as a tidal wave washes away land. 

Marcus had been through it before. Grief wasn’t something you could ignore for very long; he tried with his father, with Jake, Callie, his mother, Sinclair, Jaha, he tried over and over again until it almost consumed him. He’d beat his knuckles bloody the day after the culling on the Ark cost three hundred and twenty people their lives. He’d drank himself into a stupor after Jake, but this was worse. His own death played on a loop behind his eyes, Indra, Raven, and Abby on the other side of the door, saying goodbye, the woosh sound when the airlock opened and the rush when the air in his lungs was pulled from his body. The physical pain had been nothing compared to watching Abby watch him die. He shook his head trying to dislodge the vision but it wouldn’t leave.

Both he and Sam hadn’t moved since his dramatic reveal. Marcus questioned everything that had just happened, but as he searched her face, the stubborn resilience there wouldn’t yield. Her shoulders were square, facing him with unwavering stoicism, when she finally turned to walk out of the arena, his body turned to follow.

“We should go,” Nias said. As he wrapped his larger fingers around Kane’s arm. 

“Who did she lose?” Marcus blurted out. Nias closed his eyes as his own suffering became apparent. 

“We’ve all lost people today,” he said as his grip tightened. “Leave it alone.”

“Nias!” Saryn shouted from the stairs above them. Nias released Kane’s arm as Saryn near stumbled down the stairs and leapt into Nias’s arms, her face already flushed and swollen with drying tears. 

Marcus stepped back from the two, determined to give them space, but also to find a way out. His eye fell on the stairs down to the entrance tunnel to the arena. 

“Don’t try it Kane,” Nias barked. “You won’t get two feet. Leave…her…be.” He ordered it as he released Saryn and towered over Marcus. Saryn deduced the reason quickly and moved between them. 

Her muffled sobs strained her throat as she placed a hand on Nias chest. “She’ll need someone.” Saryn buried her face into Nias’ chest. He wrapped his arms around her still keeping his eyes trained on Marcus. 

“Caleb can…” he started.

“Caleb can’t help with this. He wouldn’t understand it.” Saryn was gripping Nias’ arms trying to impress the importance of the need with her body. Nias sighed and in his final act of surrender he turned with her under one arm and left Marcus alone. 

Marcus didn’t wait. He sprinted down the stairs and took off through the tunnels, following the path until he came to a fork. He didn’t know which way she went, but his instincts told him to go right. The tunnel pivoted into a ramp that, based on its position relative to the arena, led underneath the Coliseum. Metal banged against metal as he slowly walked towards a dimly lit opening in the tunnel. 

The room was equal in size to the arena above it and half as deep, with multiple levels of various training environments connected by ramps leading from one down to the next. One level was made entirely of water with only the edge lending room to stand and another was nothing but tall wood, stone, and metal pillars of varying heights surrounded by what looked like small furnaces. Yet another had no ground to stand on at all, but was simply an open chasm with thick chains spanning the distance between a circular ring just wide enough for you to grip onto if you fell. That’s where he found her. 

Sam was suspended on the highest level of the training courts balancing on the chains beneath her feet, a metal staff in one hand, and small barbed spheres being launched at her from all sides. Her uniform lay hanging off a post at the entrance. She danced across the chains barefoot in a grey tank top and black shorts, swinging the staff to deflect the spheres away from her while the magnetism of the ring pulled them back towards her. 

Marcus’ crimson eyes could see through the layers of her exposed skin to the energy underneath, roiling and turbulent, and growing as she moved. It lit up the hundreds of scars that littered her body from her back and shoulders, to her abdomen and legs. There were very few spaces on her body not marked by battle. Marcus remembered that clones often didn’t keep their scars, and it only took him that piece of information to realize she’d never been cloned. 

Sam swung the staff with ever more increasing speed and ferocity as the spheres accelerated. She started to dodge, instead of deflecting, as her strikes had to cover multiple sides at once until five came at once and she missed two. The barbed weapons struck her right thigh front and back and she dropped using the staff to grab the chain and swing herself back up to balance on her one good leg. Then every launcher fired at once. Marcus watched as a dozen shots fired at her high and low, aimed at every vital point on her point.

“Sam!” He yelled as the spheres flew straight at her. She inhaled, closed her eyes and when they opened again the gold ring surrounding her iris sparkled. She pressed down hard into the chain and launched herself into the air, spinning her arms into her chest and torquing her body into a twist to avoid the spheres. The staff still gripped tightly in her hand, swung around her body as a shield, deflecting them back to the ring where the force embedded them into the metal. A robotic voice broke the silence of the training hall, ‘end live simulation’. 

She spun on one leg, glaring at him from across the chains. “Leave Kane.” She leapt onto the edge of the ring, pulling the two spheres from her thigh and placing them back at a launcher, her blood slowly leaking down her thigh as the wound gradually closed. 

Marcus moved forward unfazed by her anger. “I just came to…”

“To what, hmm?” She interrupted, now standing mere feet from him. “There’s nothing you can do. We have hell coming for us. Now leave.” Marcus wouldn’t budge, not this time.

“You’re injured,” he stated.

“I’ll heal.”

“You’re hurting.”

“It’ll pass.” She stepped around him and moved across the ledge to another stairwell leading down to another training floor. This one covered in six-foot-high stone and metal humanoid shaped targets. She moved around the targets firing her fists out to hit every one without restraining her power. Marcus could hear the bones in her hands crack on impact as the targets were left dented or shattered as she moved from one to the next before she reached the end of the training zone. 

Marcus walked through the zone, his palms grazing over the dents in the target. His fingers flinched remembering his own self-destruction on the Ark. “You blame yourself.”  
Sam went to march past him, but he stood in her way. “I made Cyrus. I let him run roughshod over my home and my people for far too long, and now they are paying for it. Of course, I’m to blame.” She meant to leave, but Marcus continued to block her path. “Get out of my way.”

“No.”

She swung her fist and connected a glancing blow at his jaw, spun low and tripped him onto his back and pressed her knee onto his chest. Marcus winced on landing, but found her hand behind his head. She’d caught him. 

“I know what you’re feeling,” he breathed. “I’ve felt it.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she sighed as she slid her knee off him and collapsed onto the floor.

“Then explain it to me,” he said as he pushed himself up to meet her eye to eye. 

“I can’t.” She closed her eyes, clenching them tightly as her walls started to crumble. She covered her eyes with one arm as she laid back against the hard ground. Marcus kept his distance, but knew she was struggling. Why did the women he met always have to be so bloody strong willed? Abby flashed before his eyes. He choked and coughed as the pain gripped his chest.

“What was that?” Sam worried as her tear-stained red eyes met his. 

“It’s nothing,” he said trying to shake off the feeling. Sam shook her head and huffed as the realization hit her, she had no choice but to help him, and he wouldn’t let her for free.

“An exchange then,” she suggested. “You let me help you, and I’ll explain.” Marcus nodded then tried to verbalize the vision he’d been having of his death. It wasn’t that he’d tried to pictured it, but more that he kept seeing it, and of course the last sight of Abby pressed against the airlock door. Sam nodded along as he retold the events that led up to his decision, everything from waking up in a new body to finding out what had happened to get him there. 

“It’s a symptom of Cognitive Displacement, “she explained. “Your mind knows you died, and is struggling with the fact that you’re walking around breathing as if it never happened. You keep seeing it because your mind is fixated on that event, and the nanocytes in your body are trying to help you contend with that.”

“Can you make it stop?”

“Yes, but I need your permission. I have to enter your mindscape again.” She shifted closer to him. 

“I’d rather not,” he hesitated. Although fascinating, he still wasn’t comfortable with the fact that Sam held some of his memories, and giving her access to more would take trust beyond what he’d shared with her before. 

“I’m sorry, and I know this is difficult for you, but it’s the only way,” she tried to assure him of his safety and security, but how could you promise that when you’re swimming around in someone’s mind. How could she promise safety when her own mind was in turmoil?

“Because your nanocytes connect us, right?” He asked but he already knew the answer from the subtle lift of her one eyebrow. He’d put the pieces together, albeit slowly, but the puzzle fit. In this society uncloned individuals were a rarity, he kept feeling things from her he couldn’t explain, and his instinctual connection to her had to be more than luck. “You said to build my body you used human tissue and cells donated from an uncloned citizen of Caryx, your words exactly.”

“Yes.”

“Is that why I’m like you?” He referred to his eyes and the small glow emanating from under his skin. 

“It’s possible, and likely.” Marcus took a couple deep breaths and stood. Sam didn’t budge. “Alright,” he surrendered. “Do it.” He crouched next to her. 

Sam sat crossed legged and he followed. She explained the mind isn’t a straight path, and he should be prepared to see and feel things he’d long left behind him. Marcus was apprehensive but didn’t want to live every second watching that scene play out in front of him. She rested her arms against her knees and reached for his hands. Clasped within her own, Marcus felt his eyes grow heavy until he couldn’t keep them open. 

He felt the warm breeze brush across his skin, the scent of pine carried by the wind surrounding him in the familiarity of Earth. When he opened his eyes he recognized the setting of the first moment he’d spent on Earth, but what surprised him most was Abby standing beside him looking to the horizon with unbridled joy. He reached towards her, but Sam appeared from behind and caught his wrist.

“It’s just a memory,” Sam said as she guided his hand back down. “You won’t be able to interact with them.” Marcus met her gaze, his shoulders heavy but his eyes light. “I’m sorry, it’s just safer to start on a memory you cherish.” Marcus gasped as the trees dissolved away and the mountains vanished, there place being taken by the cold hard metal of space.

It’d been so long since they’d been on the Ark, he’d almost forgot the background sounds of the whirring engines and machinery that kept them alive for so long. The airlock stood in front of them, two guards on either side, a woman locked behind it, and the image of Marcus Kane, councillor and Commander of the Guard pushing the button that floated her into space. Sam stood beside Marcus as he watched his past unfold before him. The image blurred slightly as another stood in the place of the woman, then another, then another. 

“Why show me this?” Marcus cringed.

“You chose this,” Sam whispered. “I’m just along for the ride. If the symptom is focusing on moments in your life where you wanted death, these were the first.”

Marcus watched as dozens of people appeared inside the airlock doors. He regretted not knowing them all by name, a few yes, a few that were important to him, but the others, it ground at his soul to know he’d ignored them. The human race was what mattered, he thought as the justification ran rampant in his head. It hadn’t mattered in the end. 

The scene before them paled and blurred until a small room on Ark station, section seventeen took shape along with the three hundred and twenty people locked inside. The space was cramped and cold, and Marcus found it difficult to breathe as his heart began to race. The circulation of air had stopped, and he was living it, there with them. Marcus gasped for breath. Sam gripped his collar and pulled until his back collided with her chest. She wrapped her arm around his chest, pressing her palm to his heart.  
“You weren’t here, you didn’t feel this, breathe Marcus.” She repeated it until his breathing slowed and his heartrate levelled out. He slumped forward slightly as the scene faded. Marcus clamped his eyes shut. He didn’t want to see anymore, but when he opened them again Abby was staring back at him. 

“I can’t do this again,” she whispered as both hands cupped his face. Marcus breathed in her unique scent as she rested her forehead to his. He remembered this all too well, but this wasn’t an illusion, this wasn’t just a memory, he could feel her here with him. Marcus glanced at Sam whose confused stare told him all he needed to know. This shouldn’t be happening. 

“Marcus,” Sam called. “Let her go.” He pulled back from Abby the same way he had before, called the guards, and they took his memory self away, leaving him behind to watch as Abby stared after him, determination etched into her features. 

Marcus shook his head. “I don’t want to see anymore.” He stepped towards Sam as the space around them transformed again. He watched as Abby had him placed on the cross in Polis, the tower behind and the rain pouring around them. “I don’t want to see this,” he shouted over his own screams as the nails pierced through his wrists. Marcus looked down to find the scars at his wrists open and bleeding. He spun on his heel and grabbed Sam by both shoulders. “Stop it, please.”

“We haven’t found the right memory yet,” she looked at him, pity pouring out of her eyes. “I’m sorry, but if we don’t find it you could go insane.”

“I don’t care,” he breathed heavily. “Stop it, now.” He shook her as he yelled, and the scene blinked out of existence replaced by a red sand beach with towering purple-leafed black trees erupting from the sand. Marcus blinked quickly; his grip still tight on Sam’s shoulders. “I don’t remember this.”

Sam’s fingers dug into his forearms drawing his attention back to her. She looked panicked. “Marcus, I need you to stop, now.”

“Why don’t I remember this?” He wondered as he searched the horizon over the crystal-clear water for something recognizable. 

Sam shook him back to look at her. “Focus on me, you need to let go. Wake up!”

“Why?”

“It’s not your memory, it’s mine,” Sam said as she looked around frantically. “You’ve taken over the mindscape, we could get trapped in here. You need to wake up. NOW!” She slapped him hard, but nothing changed. A dagger appeared in her hand and she slashed it across his chest hoping the pain would bring him back to reality. It didn’t. “Marcus please,” she begged at this point. “We need to go.”

Marcus’ eyes shifted up along the beach until he saw four shadows begin to take shape in the distance. A woman and three children, two girls and a boy. He recognized Sam immediately by her long black hair, the two girls were her likeness almost exactly, but the boy must’ve been his father’s son because he was all fiery red hair and his emerald eyes sparkled over the red sand. 

“Mommy,” the youngest girl shrieked with glee as memory-Sam lifted her into the air and spun her around. Marcus was still holding Sam as her knees fell to the sand, her grip on him released and wracking sobs erupting from her chest. She shook as one hand flew to her chest and the other out towards the image unfolding before her eyes. 

“Sam,” Marcus spoke softly but it was like she was lost to this vision, dream or nightmare, he couldn’t tell. Sam watched as her daughters dug shells out of the sand and her son tormented them by stealing them. She smiled briefly before turning back to Marcus. She placed a hand on his cheek, her eyes already filled with tears. He searched her face for some sort of answer, but all he found was the reflection of his own pain. 

“Please, wake up,” she sobbed. 

Marcus just shook his head feverishly trying to figure out how to reverse what he’d done, but he couldn’t. “I’m sorry, I don’t know how.”

Sam blinked back the tears and stared into his eyes. The crimson was gone, replaced by the warm umber brown that she’d first seen when he first opened his eyes. They were lost in a fog of confusion and panic. She had no choice. 

“I’m sorry too,” she murmured, and then she kissed him.


	10. Secrets

_Caryx (Origin Planet below Alpha Site) – T – 8 Days_

Her eyes hurt. Red and tired, she rubbed at them. She’d been staring into microscopes for forty-eight hours straight without sleep. She stretched her neck and rolled her shoulders feeling the familiar slide of the muscles in her back over the bones. It was comfortable. It was recognizable. It was human, and right now she needed that more than anything. Sinclair and Jackson lay against the table beside her, already passed out after several hours of the same monotonous testing. There were only so many ways you could recombine human DNA, but Caryx’s triple helix led to several other possible permutations, and that mapping was taking longer. 

Abby shifted a blinking tablet out from under Jackson’s arm and pressed the resync application to run the next division of DNA sequences. She smiled as his arm curled back under his face as he turned his head to the side. When Jackson walked out from the stasis chamber Abby quickly pulled him into a motherly hug that he gratefully returned. He was visibly confused as were the others that stood behind him. Thelonious followed quickly behind Jackson, but it was the simple gaze of the familiar blue eyes she’d grown to love that stopped her in her tracks.

Abby couldn’t remember the last time she felt truly happy, Polis maybe, no stepping out of the bunker and finding Clarke, embracing with her family, uniting the old and the new, that must’ve been it. For that split second, she was just a mother reuniting with her lost daughter, while finally breathing free air beside the man that she loved. That was more difficult now. Jake had stared intensely at her, almost like he was absorbing everything about her for the first time, but she supposed that was true considering his last memory of her was a year before they first stepped on Earth. The ground had cost them all so much, but they had also gained so much. 

They slowly moved towards each other, Abby already reaching out one hand while the other covered her mouth as if it could stop the tears she was already shedding. Jake wrapped his arms gently around her fragile frame covering her completely as she buried her face in his neck. It was him, and yet it wasn’t. When she pulled back, the eyes she met gazed into her with nothing but pure unabashed love, and it broke her. 

“Hey, baby, what’s wrong?” Jake whispered softly as his palm came to rest on her cheek. 

She sniffed and wiped at her eyes to fight the tears from falling. “You’re here,” she stuttered.

“I’m here.” He nodded as his thumb swiped a tear away from her face. 

“Do you remember what happened?”

“I think so, but I don’t understand.” Jake looked around the lab. “Where are we?”

Abby just shook her head as she pulled him back against her. “That’s a long story.” Jake kissed her temple and she pulled back, stunning both herself and him. It shouldn’t have been surprising but after years without him she’d never imagined seeing him again, yet here he was, her husband, in the flesh, alive and looking at her with a yearning so delicate it might break her. She tilted her head and gave the slightest apologetic smile before he leaned in to kiss her. It still caught her off guard, but the way his soft lips moved against hers spurred her body to remember. Her hands rested against his chest, while his pulled her closer to him, molding her body to his. 

The memories of her life on the Ark with Jake and Clarke came rushing back to the surface and she had to break away before they threatened to overwhelm her. She pressed her forehead into his chest as he rested his hands on her shoulders.

“Hey it’s okay,” he soothed as he rubbed one hand up and down her back. 

“That’s enough,” Tanis interrupted. His eyes raked over Abby as the two split apart, with Jake being seized and shuffled out through a corridor. Abby tried to follow but was blocked. She could feel her heart in her ears as she watched him taken away. To have him back only to lose him again was worse then watching him die. 

Jake, Thelonious and Sinclair had been assigned to an engineering team run by one of Cyrus’s commanders. Where Tanis was sleek and lean, the man that led the engineering team looked positively skeletal with limbs barely holding any muscle at all. He dragged himself through the lab giving orders to soldiers and scientists alike, but all the while looking like he was about to topple over. The man was gaunt, grey, bald and looked like death personified, which after a day of watching him meander through the lab, he did die, right in front of them. Abby tried to revive him, but after pounding on his chest until she couldn’t lift her arms Tanis pulled her off of him, only to toss his body into an incinerator at the back of the lab. 

That’s the transformation their bodies would go through as they got closer to the ten-day deadline, although when the same man returned not an hour later looking healthy with a renewed vitality sparking with youth Abby finally understood the end consequence of Caryx’s cloning. Abby just got them back and hell would freeze over before she lost them again, so she pushed harder and harder, foregoing sleep and food, to try and solve this genetic lock that was preventing cloned bodies from sustaining.

The first group Tanis woke were the thinkers, Raven along with them, the second were the warriors who were quickly shuffled off to another section of the underground facility along with Roan. It didn’t make her feel any better when Octavia Blake was shoved out of the stasis chamber already blood spattered from attacking one of her guards. Abby flinched as the girl was shot twice in both legs and dragged out of the lab, her green eyes finding Abby with an enraged glare. Diyoza wasn’t far behind, but Abby’s breath caught as the confusion on her face combined with her hands searching her body, revealed what Abby was already afraid of. Diyoza wasn’t pregnant. Not even the technology on Caryx could fake that in an infertile environment. 

“No!” Diyoza screamed as she was dragged kicking and screaming from the lab. 

Abby had no power, but she had to find a way to get them out of this. It left her feeling slightly vulnerable not having the fierce King of Azgeda always by her side, but at least with Jackson and Raven nearby she felt less alone. Clarke was left in her pod, a constant reminder that Cyrus had leverage over her, which he wouldn’t hesitate to use.  
“Abby,” Jackson whispered breaking her from her daze. “Have you seen this?” He raised the tablet he’d been working on as a gene sequence finished coding. “It’s the telomeres, classic cloning problem.”

“They’re cloned at the same age as the original cells,” she agreed. “It’s accelerated aging, of course, no body could take that with the lifetimes these people have lived.” 

“But how do we fix it?” Jackson was justifiably concerned. Abby gripped the back of her neck trying to massage out the tension forming that was driving a pounding headache behind her eyes. Her eyes were closed but she could hear the booted steps approaching.

“I don’t know. I can’t even stay awake,” she buried her faced in her hands. She felt the pinch at her neck and the telltale warmth of something being injected into her neck before her eyes shot open and her heart skipped three beats. “What the hell?”

Tanis stood beside her, a small injection apparatus no longer than his finger firmly grasped at his side. He proceeded past her injecting both Jackson and Raven with the same. The drug flooded her body, warming it, rejuvenating it and forcing her heart to pump faster than necessary.

“It’s just a small stimulant,” he grinned. “We don’t need you to sleep. We need you to work. You aren’t the only group working on this solution, and should another find the answer first we won’t need you anymore.”

“We don’t need it,” Abby said standing as close to Tanis as she dared, meeting his amused gaze with a glare of her own. 

Tanis placed the device beside her work station and smirked. “One dose every six hours will keep you awake, alert, and functioning. I’d advise you not to dose again before that, but then you’re a doctor – you know the effects of narcotics.” He moved to leave, but Abby already grabbed the device and threw it at him. He caught it and left it on the nearest table. “Every six hours, or else she dies.” He pointed at the two guards standing opposite the stasis chamber. Abby’s heart sank at the metaphorical crucible facing her. If she saved them all they would probably still be killed, but if she didn’t save them, they all would definitely be killed, or die eight days. Lose-lose either way.

Jackson leaned in closer placing his fingers gently across her own. “Abby what do we do?”

“We find another option within the next six hours.”

“And if we don’t?”

Abby’s eyes met his and Raven’s, her throat closing and her heart racing. “Then we try again, until it works.” The two both understanding what that would mean, especially to her. 

_Alpha Site: T – 8 Days_

Two days of non-stop training and drills on the levels underneath the Coliseum. Two days on very little sleep, food was consumed at rapid pace before each squadron was shuffled off to their next task. Alpha Site was readying for a war it wasn’t equipped to fight, the command structure was attempting to turn scientists into soldiers in whatever way they could, but most importantly no one had seen or heard from their Colonel in two days. 

Marcus shifted and parried Nias’s attacks one right after the other. He couldn’t tell if the man was taking it easy on him, or if his vision was just getting better, but either way he was beginning to be able to predict his movements before they struck. It didn’t matter that he never landed a hit against him either, just that he didn’t end up flat on his back every two seconds which was how his first training session with Nias had gone. 

“Have you heard anything?” Marcus said as his right leg swung for Nias’s knee. Nias dodged and countered a knee towards his sternum. Marcus swung both elbows down, stopping the knee just short of his chest, but that left his head unguarded. Nias’s right hook came fast and hard and sent him flying.

“You’re distracted, focus,” Nias said frustrated with Kane’s progress.

“She’s avoiding me isn’t she,” Marcus winced as his jaw cramped. 

“The commanders are planning a war,” Nias said as he pulled Kane to his feet. “They have their jobs, we have ours. Now guard up, or I’ll give you another one to match that eye.”

Marcus’s left eye was already squeezing shut, obscuring his vision, and pulsing as blood flooded the newly forming purple bruise. It obstructed his vision enough that his performance only worsened as the training session drew on. When Nias had had enough of beating Kane to a pulp he simply shook his head and sat down on a nearby bench. 

Marcus, lying on the floor, chest rising and falling in short shallow pants, felt every muscle in his body ache and whine every time he tried to move. His left eye was completely closed, his jaw clicked every time he tried to speak, his ribs crackled as he breathed and his right knee and ankle probably couldn’t hold his own weight if he stood.

“Give it a minute,” Nias instructed as he pushed Kane back to the floor. “The nanites just need to assess the damage. Then they’ll fix you.”

Marcus could already feel the tech inside him working as the swelling around his eye decreased and his breathing became less laboured. “The Major is here, why not Sam?”

Nias kicked Kane in the head, just hard enough to stun him. “You’re too familiar with her.”

“I meant no disrespect,” Marcus explained. “But it seems strange she’s disappeared.”

“Major Ausin leads the military on Alpha Site.”

“But he defers to the Colonel in all things,” Nias simply nodded. “And yet, no one’s seen her in two days.”

“She’s in C&C, now leave it be.” Nias stood and moved to re-join another group to continue training. Marcus’s wrist started to glow a bright green beneath the surface of his skin, the indicator that he needed to eat soon. He and a few other Paladins made their way out of the Coliseum and towards the nearest mess hall before they would have to return for more drills. Marcus hadn’t had his time this regulated since basic training on the Ark.

The food on Alpha Site was fresh and grown on site, which also meant the radiation from the triple suns of Caryx and the constant pull from the black whole made them abnormally large. Marcus sat in the corner of a marketplace that overlooked the forested section on Alpha site. He breathed a little easier sitting beside something that reminded him of Earth even if the purple and red hues of the trees were all wrong, and the smells, although pleasant, just didn’t match the pine of where Arkadia had fallen. 

He tried not to let his mind wander as he focused in on the fruit and vegetables on his plate. It had been too long since he’d eaten real food with any substance his mouth couldn’t help but water every time. The vibrant green tube-like fruit burst with a mixture of sweet and sour citrus as he bit into it. It almost made him forget the events of the past two days, since his mishap in Sam’s mindscape, and since the unstable nature of his own memories kept leaking into his present. 

As Marcus ate in relative silence, he searched the forest for something familiar, anything that could remind him a little more of home. After a while the trees just began to blur into one another, a see of reds, oranges, and purples filling his sightline. He felt the telltale tingling of his attribute activating in his eyes and he tried to numb it down and hold it back, but it didn’t matter, he couldn’t control it and the one person who could teach him how to use it was avoiding him. He shook his head in frustration and sighed.

Marcus felt a gentle hand touch his right shoulder, and as he turned he couldn’t help but fall back as two warm amber eyes bore into his like reaching into his soul. 

“It’s okay,” she whispered as she reached for him. “It’s okay.”

Marcus’s breathing stuck and his heart stopped as he reached out for the woman he knew couldn’t possibly be there. He thought his hand would pass through her but it stopped as it met hers, fingers linking through hers. 

“Abby,” he exhaled as if every emotion he had ever felt could be put into one single name. 

“Kane,” Nias yelled. Nias was towering over the table, concern clearly etched into his face. “You’re late for training.”

Marcus was hyperventilating, but he concentrated on slowing his breathing rate to normal. “How long have been here?”

“Two hours, and what caused this,” Nias referred to the food littered across the floor.

“I-uh, I’m not sure.”

“Get back to Coliseum immediately.” Marcus nodded and began to pick up the scattered vegetables as he tried to shake the feeling of someone watching him. 

Sam was watching him, although digitally. She hadn’t stopped since he invaded her mindscape. She had been quick to extricate herself from him once the link was broken, and although what he’d seen and what had happened were isolated to her mindscape, the sensations they felt still flooded each of their bodies. 

Marcus was confused to say the least, but Sam hadn’t come near him in two days for him to even ask her about it, but if his worsening symptoms were any cause for concern no one else seemed to notice, at least they weren’t saying anything. It didn’t take him long to decide if she wouldn’t come to him, then he would find her. 

The Colonel’s office alongside C&C was silent with barely a whisper of machinery humming in the background. Sam typed away at a digital imprint of a specialized keyboard on her desk while Saryn linked a wireless connection to both Sam’s nanites and the communication’s hub holo-emitter. They would have shared access to what Sam was seeing and hearing, but without Saryn directly being in the line of sight. 

“You understand what you’re about to learn is confidential and classified to the highest level of our society,” Sam said coolly as Saryn nodded. “Good. Then let’s get started.”

Sam pressed an execute tab on the keyboard and three wires emerged from the desk centre. She pressed them to her right wrist and the skin molded around the wire leads absorbing them into her body and linking them to her neural pathways. 

“Colonel,” Saryn spoke but her question stuck in her throat. Sam smiled gently, standing and placing a hand on Saryn’s arm. 

“Saryn, you wouldn’t be in this room if I didn’t trust you so say what you mean to say.”

Saryn took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, her hair colour changing from red to purple with her mood. “This could change how I feel about you.”

“If you don’t know the truth of someone, then you don’t really know them. I trust you, but there is no doubt in my mind you will leave this room with a changed opinion of me.”

“I won’t,” Saryn said placing the tablet down on the desk and stubbornly crossing her arms. “You’ve done so much for me, and our people.”

“I’ve taken so much more, but you’ll learn that,” Sam settled back into her desk chair. “Start the program.” 

Saryn input a code into Sam’s link and the parallel program that began synced to Saryn’s datapad. The link would mirror everything Sam saw and heard, but would completely hide Saryn’s presence within the link, allowing her access to the terminal connection of the call. The jolt sent through Sam’s system convulsed her body as the link had to be stabilized first on their end before reaching Caryx. Every nerve in her body was on fire, sending random electrical signals into her system where the nanites tried to absorb them. It was dangerous, especially for her, as her attribute charged itself from residual energy, and it could overload her control if she wasn’t careful. 

“Connecting Colonel,” Saryn said as the holo-vid screen fizzed to life in front of her. 

“Stay silent at all times, and keep digging until you find it.” Saryn nodded quickly and bit her lip as Cyrus’s image filled the screen.

“Well well, didn’t expect to be hearing from you so soon after our last conversation. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you missed me.”

Sam was calm and steady. “Keep dreaming Cyrus.” Saryn typed furiously in the background, her key strokes muffled by the audio blocker she’d placed in the mirrored program hiding her presence in the room.

“All I do is dream. You could still come home.”

“You’ve destroyed our home, and anything left cannot be fixed while you live.”

“Ah, so you’ve decided then,” Cyrus said as he dragged out the syllables in each word. “You’re going to kill me this time.”

“You haven’t left me any choice.” 

“You tried before and failed.”

“You hadn’t just massacred over half of our surviving people, with no way to bring them back.”

“Sacrifices must be made,” Cyrus said as his figure loomed closer. “But then you know that better than most. How many died from that plague?”

“Shut up!” Sam’s face was turning red, her pulse had quickened and her fists clenched the desk in front of her.

“Hit a nerve did I,” Cyrus laughed as his smug face filled the screen. “You probably remember the exact number of deaths. The weight of their lives crushing you under the guilt.”

“Shut…up!”

“And all the while, not a single person aside from me knows where that virus came from. Some might see you killing me as a way to simply conceal the truth.”

“We all decided to bury it,” Sam’s nanites were flooding her body with inhibiting hormones, attempting to bring her condition back under control, but she fought it with every ounce of her being.

“Maybe, but the others are dead,” he sneered as emphasized the point. “I wonder if the Paladins would still follow you if they knew you were the one who ended the world.” Saryn’s keystrokes paused above her datapad. Sam couldn’t look at her, but she could imagine what Saryn was feeling in that moment.

“The first time, but we’ll both answer for our crimes eventually.”

“See there’s your problem Sam,” Cyrus lectured as he leaned back into his own chair, hands behind his head, relaxed and unbothered by the situation. “You care about the lives we take. I don’t.”

“It’s not weak to value life,” Sam shouted. Saryn put a thumb up into the air behind the screen. “One life or a billion they’re all the same, and if I can save one life regardless of whose it is, from you, then I will lay down mine gladly for it.”

“Such a waste. Oh well, I’m sure I can find another to replace you.”

“Cyrus,” she said clamping her eyes shut and biting the side of her mouth. “I need you to answer this question, and for once in your life, be truthful.”

“I don’t owe you anything,” Cyrus spat. 

“You owe me everything,” Sam growled, took a deep breath and asked what she secretly didn’t want to know. “Did you kill Kai?”

“He was a Paladin,” he answered and Sam’s heart plummeted. “I can’t have my enemy’s forces on my doorstep, despite their relation to me.”

“You killed our son.”

“Now you understand the depth of my conviction. You’re next.” The signal cut off as Cyrus terminated the connection. Sam leaned back into her chair and pulled the wires from her wrist as the desk coiled them back inside it’s interior. She hadn’t opened her eyes yet, and wasn’t sure what she expected to see, but when she did what met her was surprising.

Saryn stood beside her, the datapad on the desk, and tears brimming in the corner of her eyes. She lunged at Sam and wrapped her arms around her neck, hugging her tightly. “I don’t care if it’s true,” she mumbled into Sam’s shoulder. “I don’t care.” Sam smiled briefly before tugging Saryn’s arms gently free from around her neck.  
“I appreciate that Saryn, but it doesn’t forgive what I’ve done.”

“Maybe not, but you’re trying to make up for it, and I have to believe that’s worth it.” Saryn wiped the one tear that was threatening to fall from her eye and grabbed her data pad. “Besides, you’re going to love what I found in their network.”

Sam just shook her head. Same old Saryn, optimistic to a fault.


	11. Insurgence

_Caryx (Origin Planet below Alpha Site) – T – 6 Days_

Abby and Raven had been running through variations on genetic profiles for days with no result closer to what their captors wanted. They hadn’t slept, they barely ate, and the narcotics running through their systems were needing to be administered more frequently to keep them awake. Their guards kept a close watch on them, but it hadn’t taken long for Abby to establish a discernible pattern in their movements and schedules. That’s when she first had the idea. 

Jackson had been meticulously categorizing a combination of test vials with plasma transfusions and separating them by the triple helix pattern they issued. It was repetitive work but it’s what Abby said she needed done. He worked on it tirelessly until he noticed the patterns showcased started emitting the same results again and again.

“Abby,” he whispered as he approached her workstation concealing his data pad beneath his arm. “Have you seen this?” She glanced away from her station briefly, nodded, and returned to what she was doing.

“Don’t you think it’s strange we’re running the same sequence over again.”

“It’s fine Jackson,” she hushed him. 

He met her determined eyes and after glancing at her tablet knew something was up. “You knew.”

“Jackson, I need you to keep running those sequences, please.” Abby fixed her eyes back on to her microscope and pressed a command into her pad injecting the sample with something organic. 

Raven and her guard escort came through the door at the far end of the lab carrying a new set of screening profiles from Cyrus’s men. She slid past Abby slipping a small ripped piece of cloth into her left pocket. 

“Hey Abby, how are we doing in here?” Raven asked enthusiastically, a little too enthusiastically. 

Abby blinked, a confused look etching lines into her forehead. She swept her fingers over Raven’s neck, shifting her hair aside the find dozens of puncture marks speckled across her dark skin.

“Raven how often have they been injecting you?” Abby asked as she felt Raven’s irregular heartbeat pulsing against her fingertips. 

“Too often,” Raven said shaking her head as if trying to keep herself awake. “Between the engineering team and this one, I’m slowing down too fast, and they notice.” Raven’s eyes were bloodshot and her pulse rapid and irregular. She had to grip the lab table to ground herself and focus with her head spinning out of control. “We’re running out of time.”

Abby was now used to the initial sensations after the injections: euphoria, feeling invincible, alert, and focused accompanied with a rapid acceleration in action almost like having adrenaline dosed right into your heart. Unfortunately, Raven was the only one allowed to transfer to the others working the engineering tasks, and Abby was the only one allowed to administer aid to the military recruits being assigned to Cyrus’s new battalions. If they didn’t enact their plan soon they wouldn’t be strong enough to go through with it. 

The nanocytes worked fast but certain injuries needed medical care and with Abby’s new nanite upgrade her brain was firing on all cylinders. It’s the allowance of their movement which convinced her to plan their escape and Raven and the others were all too willing to jump on board. Through Abby communicating to the soldiers, and Raven to the engineers, they had built an underground network passing information between the three groups in order to plan their uprising. There were only a couple problems standing in their way. The first being time and a lack of it, the second was access to a viable escape route, and the third was Octavia who stubbornly refused to help even with the others pushing her to commit. 

Abby dropped a glass slide under the table and bent to retrieve it, subtly drawing the cloth from her pocket with great care not to smudge or destroy the message upon it. The corner of her mouth twitched slightly as she recognized Jake’s familiar handwriting. Every time they passed one of these messages the codes were always simple, letters, symbols, or numbers accounting for time, locations, guard numbers. It was an arduous task trying to communicate that way, but it was all they could manage, but Abby had begun to look forward to these messages. 

The soft fabric was ripped from one of their uniforms, but she could smell the lingering scent of chemicals, metal, and something innately Jake. Scraped into the fabric were a combination of letters and numbers spelling out: 3Y – 1N – 8XD – NSY. It was a relatively simple code, but without the idea of what they were doing, the guards couldn’t decipher it should they catch them. 

“So?” Raven said as she gripped her right hand to keep it from shaking.

“Not yet,” Abby responded. “I take it you’re the other yes, and Thelonius is still saying no.” Raven nodded. “I’d like to know who they’re planning on fighting.”

“Sinclair said they built eight more devices, but they don’t have a fuel source,” Raven explained. “They can’t even use them yet. If we move now, we can disable them and get out.”

“We still don’t have a map out of here, what if…” Abby stopped short as Tanis entered from the upper level and slid his way down the stairs as graceful as a cat on a ledge. 

“Any news doctors?” he whispered as leaned in over her shoulder, his breath blowing the hair beside her cheek. 

“Nothing yet,” Jackson bristled as he moved closer to Abby and pulled her toward his scope. “Abby can you take a look at this for me.” She shifted out of the uncomfortable proximity Tanis had impressed on her and slid toward Jackson’s work. 

“I’m going to need to borrow the good doctor for a while,” he said raising an eyebrow toward Jackson. 

“For what?” Raven blurted out.

“It’s alright Raven,” Abby interjected. “It’s probably just more injuries, right?” Tanis sneered, tilted his head and nodded. Tanis wrapped his fingers around her left arm and pulled her towards the stairs. 

“Don’t worry,” he said as Jackson and Raven looked on with mild terror. “I’ll return her in one piece. Get back to work.”

_Alpha Site: T – 6 Days_

Marcus hadn’t slept in four days. Every time he closed his eyes his memories cycled through as if watching an accelerated version of his life, and when he woke it kept playing from wherever it left off, but the hallucinations were becoming more vivid and tactile. At first the memory was just that, ghostly images drifting from corner to corner of his sightline usually accompanied by someone from his past calling for him, always asking for help. It was like watching his greatest triumphs and failures played on a loop, but soon after the incident in the mess hall his memories were beginning to bleed into his waking life more frequently. 

The worst occurred in one of the corridors walking back to his quarters. He heard the screams before he could see anything and chased them around the corners. The agonizing wailing pitched and wavered as if the voice was being swallowed or drowned. He heard the hard rubber of boots hitting the stone ground as he chased the sound around a bend and had the wind knocked right out of him as a metal railing caught him in the gut and knock him half-under the barrier to the central Hub. After a minute nursing the new bruise that was already forming and healing on his torso, he saw the central Hub and the drop that would have surely killed him had the barrier not been there. Crew members who’d witnessed the behaviour helped him to his feet and questioned him, but he was already following another voice down another tunnel.

He was losing himself in the past. Enough, he thought, as he reached his quarters and tried to drown out the voices in whatever way he could. Marcus linked his internal comms unit to the music he’d perused over that past few days, sat back against a small metal chair and closed his eyes attempting to block out the world. 

Marcus couldn’t tell how long he’d been sitting there, but the voices had begun to fade only to be replaced with sensations ghosting over his skin like feathers brushing against him. At first, he ignored them, but as the pressure increased he opened his eyes and found the same two brown orbs staring back at him that he had now begun to ache for. 

“Why are you here?” He asked her, the words choking him as he spoke them. 

“You asked me to come,” Abby said. Her hair hung loose around her shoulders and a blue jacket hid the torn soft fabric of her shirt underneath. All he wanted to do was touch her, but he knew if he committed to the illusion he’d be lost within it. 

“You shouldn’t have come after me back then,” he choked back a sob remembering her barreling around the corner on Eligius and practically fighting Indra to get to him.

“Well, I didn’t listen.” Abby knelt in front of him lacing his fingers in hers. 

“Why?” He asked. “Why couldn’t you let me go?”

“You know why, and you didn’t give me choice.”

“I’m sorry.”

A sudden loud thumping shook him awake and he quickly muted the music playing in his head. The banging was shaking his doorway until he stood and scanned his wrist sensor beside the door, opening it to Saryn’s worried expression. 

“Where in Caryx’s name have you been?” Saryn yelled as she seized him by the shirt and dragged him back into his quarters. “You’ve been missing for hours.”

“What?” He said as he brushed a clammy hand over his face. His face and neck were slick with sweat and his shirt was soaked. 

“Your tracker was disabled. No one could find you.” Marcus just looked on without any explanation. His hallucinations were causing blackouts. He was losing time. 

“I don’t know what happened,” he lied. 

Saryn looked him over and was instantly concerned with his ghastly pallor. “You don’t look very well.”

“I agree with you,” he surrendered as he fell back against the small couch in the corner of the entrance. 

“Are you worried about the attack?”

Marcus wasn’t sure what he should say. He’d been in battle before, but never a full out war, and never on this scale. He should be concerned at least, but he wasn’t. He was only worried that he was losing his mind, but how to avoid telling Saryn that. Marcus was never comfortable lying, but that had never stopped him from putting the interest of others first, and he trusted her. 

“No, maybe,” He answered to her increasingly confused grimace. “Lieutenant, do you trust the Colonel?”

Saryn paused. “Always! With my life and the life of our people. I know you’re uneasy about all of this, but the Colonel’s already working a plan to save us all.”

“You have a lot of faith in her,” Marcus stated pinching his eyes closed as ghostly apparitions from his memory starting flitting about the room around them. 

“It’s not just that,” Saryn explained. “The Colonel has already saved my life twice and brought me here when I wasn’t qualified to be here initially. I think she knew I needed this place. She understands people.”

“She’s intuitive.”

“Yes, but more,” Saryn stood and began pacing the room excitedly waving her hands about as she tried to describe Sam the way she knew her. “I mean, come on, she’s already seen everything at some point along the way right, so maybe she is just recognizing patterns of behaviour that she had already seen before.” Saryn’s face was flushed and her breathing faster. 

“You care a great deal for her,” Marcus pointed out. Saryn blushed a crimson shade darker than her current hair colour. 

“Well,” Saryn shrunk a bit, and in that moment is was as if Marcus was speaking with a young girl. “You would too if you knew her. I don’t think you can understand it until you see it for yourself.”

“See what?”

“The moment that makes every one of us respect her, and when it happens you just know. I mean I watched her redirect a solar flare into her body to protect this research site.”

“That’s impossible,” Marcus said but not so sure considering everything he’d seen the past week. 

“I’d say she is the definition of impossible,” Saryn smiled. Marcus met her gentle gaze and flinched as he felt a fresh wave of nausea wash over him. The memories of Abby were becoming clearer, and he watched as she was lifted onto a steel table as if it was his kitchen counter right in front of him, her pant leg ripped, and the drill boring into her thigh and femur as it had in Mount Weather. 

That’s it. He was dealing with this now.

“Where’s the Colonel?” He demanded to know.

“C&C why?” Saryn replied but was completely stunned when he side-stepped her and ran down the corridor for the central hub and the nearest staircase. He wasn’t waiting any longer. 

It didn’t take him long to navigate the corridors, he even followed a few short cuts he’d figured out after studying the schematics of Alpha site for the past four days. It was required reading for any of the Paladins to know their surroundings inside and out, and his ability to retain information was vastly improved since nanites flooded his brain.

When he reached C&C he burst through the door and headed straight for Sam’s office, but he was caught by two of the guard staff before he reached the keypad. Saryn ran through the door behind him and crashed right into the three men. The guards secured Marcus while Saryn peeled herself off the floor just as Sam’s door slid open. 

“Sorry Colonel,” Saryn stated slightly out of breath. “I lost track of him in the tunnels.” Sam just raised a single eyebrow and glanced at Marcus, hands secured in vice-grips behind his back, and two guards holding him against the railing circling the upper deck of C&C. 

“We need to talk,” was all he said. 

Sam glanced at him, Saryn’s worried expression, and the two guards ready to throw Marcus into whatever version of a cell they had on Alpha Site. She nodded and the guards slowly lowered their hands and released his. Marcus rubbed at his wrists where the metal had bit deep into his skin leaving behind tiny red lines where the skin was already folding itself together. He hated the itching. 

Sam stepped around her desk, shifting photo images and data tablets into a secure cabinet behind her desk. Marcus followed her inside and the door shut securely behind him. The space was warmly lit and reminded him of the archives room with shelves covered in leatherbound books and the familiar film-like paper that worked as well as any computer screen. There was a subtle scent of cinnamon and clover that he couldn’t place as he looked around the room. Her office balanced the modern with the classical and it felt like another window into who she was. 

“What can I do for you Cadet Kane?” She asked with a cold bite to his name. 

“You’ve been avoiding me,” he stated. 

“Do you presume yourself to be so important that I should toss aside the threat on this station to deal with you?” The venom with which she threw the last few words at him were feral. Sam stood behind her desk, her knuckles pressed into the top, and her eyes fixing him with a glare that could’ve withered Nias into an infantile mess.  
“I didn’t mean…”

“No, you did,” she stopped him. “You have no right to be here Cadet. You’re dismissed.” Sam waved her hand towards the door and returned to typing instructions into her data pad as if she had just swatted a fly away. Marcus didn’t budge. 

“Look, I don’t know what happened exactly, but I can’t do this without your help.” Marcus was practically begging, and if she could see what he saw in that instant he hoped she would help it end. The unfolding images around him began to affect his body. Old wounds pierced through him as he grabbed at his left leg feeling the beam crush down on it again. He collapsed to the floor holding his leg, his brow glistening with the sweat that accompanies immense pain, and his breathing rapid as he tried to suppress the sensation. 

Sam watched with mild curiosity as he held pressure to the former wound. “You know it’s not there, but you’re succumbing to past pain anyway. You need to be mentally stronger than that.” She stepped around the desk, knelt one knee down beside him, placed her fingers beneath his chin and lifted his gaze to hers. The red of his eyes covered the entirety of his vision but he could clearly see the gold shimmer around her pupil. “Turn it off.”

“I don’t know how,” he said through gritted teeth while a new wave of pain shooting up through his leg into his back caused him to arch off the floor. He bit back a low wail as if his dignity could somehow be saved from reeling on the floor. 

“Shhh,” she whispered as she pulled him to his feet, holding him up as his left leg gave out completely. “You can be incredibly frustrating. You need to learn the difference between illusion and reality. Now close your eyes.” Marcus clamped his eyes closed, but he opened them again when he heard her emit a gentle chuckle.

“No, Marcus, open them,” she said with a gentle smile, and he obeyed albeit a little frustrated. “You need to find the energy within that’s fueling your attribute, your power. That one sensation in your body that pools everything together. Our power, and I say our because you are sharing similarities with mine, is a reservoir. We gather energy to us, whether you have noticed it or not.”

Marcus couldn’t place sensations he’d been feeling because his mind was unravelling. He shook his head and sighed. “Pretend for a second that I know what you’re talking about, and just help me turn it off.”

“The last time I tried to help you, you invaded my mind,” Sam responded coolly. 

“I didn’t mean to.”

Sam nodded surrendering to the fact that she may just have to tell him the truth. “It’s not entirely your fault. I made the decision to use my nanites, my cells, to regenerate your body, and the unforeseen consequences of that choice are evident every day.”

“Explain?” Marcus winced as another zap of pain shot though his body.

“For example, I felt that.”

“What?”

“You haven’t honed your senses enough to determine the difference, but I’ve been watching you, and each time you drop into one of your episodes, I feel it. I’ve spent the last two days analyzing your responses and my physical reactions to determine how connected we are.” Sam clenched her fists at her side, digging her fingers into her palms.

Marcus winced as he felt the skin across his hand tug. He rubbed at his palms attempting to find an external source, but there was none, only her. 

“Can you stop it?”

“It seems to be based on intent,” Sam explained. “I only affect you when I consciously want to, but you are out of control, therefore I will try to help you, but if you invade my mind again, without my permission we’re done, and I’ll leave you to drift into your own madness.” Marcus agreed with some hesitation evident from the nervous laugh he couldn’t help but let loose. “Follow me.”

Sam led Marcus the far corner of her office and slid a brown battered tome to the side of the shelf revealing a biometric panel behind it. She placed her wrist inside and a small needle shot out and stabbed, dripping a single drop of blood onto the emitter. Marcus listened as the room seem to vibrate and mechanical joints shifted in the walls as the room began to spin gradually around its still centre. The exterior wall seemed to fold into itself as a door appeared behind where once solid wall stood. 

Sam scanned her wrist over the red sensor beside the door and it opened revealing a stone twin spiral staircase twisting downward in two directions. She turned right and Marcus followed watching carefully as each step thinned until the stairs were mere inches between the centre drop and the outside wall. The air was thinner and humid as if they were underneath a water source. It was difficult for him to breathe and twice he caught her watching him during the descent, whether to determine if he was alright or for some other reason he couldn’t tell. 

When they reached the bottom of the stairs a marbled archway opened into a vast space filled with vibrant red and green leafy plants covering every surface and growing from within the walls themselves. A roaring fire warmed the space beneath a brick hearth surrounded by black obsidian stone that reflected the firelight into every corner. Marcus’s eyes landed on the auburn couch set in the centre and a separate entrance that led into a small room with a inlets in the walls that cycled through food options based on availability from the hydroponics plantation on Alpha Site. The far wall opened to a floor-to-ceiling window of a lower view of the forest garden he’d become accustomed to seeing. 

Sam had disappeared into a separate room off the main living space and returned not two-minutes later wearing relaxed grey slacks and a thin white sweater that hung off her one shoulder and covered down to her thighs. Her black hair was tied and hung to one side spilling overtop of her exposed shoulder.

“This is your home,” Marcus blinked as he stared at her relaxed attire. It was the first time he hadn’t seen her as the Colonel. Now she was just Sam. 

“Yes.” Sam marched over to the wall overtop the fireplace and pulled two double-edged short swords from the anchors that hung there. “Here,” she said as she tossed the sword hilt first toward him. 

Marcus reacted and to his credit managed to catch the sword without dropping it. His reflexes were faster, but it had been a while since he’d held a bladed weapon. It was a simple design, but the blade was incredibly sharp as he tested the edge with his thumb barely pressing against the steel and coming back with a small slit leaking blood from the wound. Sam moved towards the entranceway that Marcus now realized had three drawn circles across the floor, two exterior smaller ones, and a larger centre. Marcus was amazed, it was a training ring. 

“I don’t see how a sword will help me control this,” he referred to his eyes. “And it won’t be much help against the rifles I’ve seen the others training with.”

“Blades are reliable,” Sam smiled. “And they never run out of ammunition. It’s the reason why it’s the first weapon we ever train with. Regardless of our technology a bladed weapon teaches patience, control, and focus. You need all three.”

“Are you this patronizing with all your soldiers?” Marcus mumbled, but to his dismay as he found himself on his back after Sam slammed the blunt side of her sword against the backs of his knees. 

“Only those that don’t listen.” She jabbed at his centre and he realized all too late she meant to really hit him. Marcus swung his blade and rolled his body sideways to avoid the piercing shot but it caught the edge of his side and ripped right through his superficial muscle. 

“Gahh,” he winced as he rolled to his feet and put his back to the wall. 

“Show me what you’ve learned,” Sam baited him, widening her stance, and aiming her sword point towards the floor. Marcus stepped back inside the centre circle and raised his blade, flipping it so that it rested on the back of his forearm. He slashed, she dodged, the two of them dancing around the circle following each other’s movements as if they had rehearsed them before. Sam gently deflected his attempts to hit her, all the while keeping a careful watch on his eyes. The fiery red that covered the surface of his eyes was crawling back towards his pupil, as if ink spilling over a page, encircling it and remaining. 

Marcus felt calm for the first time in days. His muscles responded when he wanted them to and even sometimes before he thought it guarding his every move from Sam’s attacks. He struck with certainty and followed each move already prepared for the next. He could see the patterns in her shorter stance mirrored by his own reflecting each blow with pinpoint accuracy. He didn’t know how but it was the best sparring session he’d had yet. Marcus grinned as Sam’s blade clashed against his block an inch from his neck, but that’s when he started to fall. Her foot was planted behind the instep of his left leg and it took a mere second for him to realise before she had him planted on his back, her knee on top of his chest and her blade tip against his throat rising and falling with his gasps as he tried to regain the wind he’d lost. 

Sam slid her knee off and lay beside him, her sword safely resting opposite them. “Now, tell me what you see,” she whispered. Marcus looked confused until he searched the room and found nothing out of place, no apparitions haunting him, no memories bleeding through into reality, just nothing. 

“How’d you know that would work?”

“I spent one-hundred and thirty days inside a quarantine isolation ward when I first came into my attribute. I remember training always helped. I thought Nias would’ve helped with the same affect, but you were always distracted.”

“I was distracted because you weren’t behaving normally, and I thought I was the cause,” he said exasperated. 

“You were the cause,” she smiled. “Not completely of course. I am planning a war after all, but you did concern me. You need to focus and understand that your power whether emitted one way or the other from your body is still managed by your sense of control. Try to imagine a dam slowly letting water through specific points. If the dam fails and the water runs free it would destroy everything around it. That’s what happens when we lose control, as you found in the Coliseum.”

“How do you control it?”

“You don’t really. You direct it, but the easiest way to start is with breath,” she said. “All control derives from breath. It has a pace, a rhythm to it, and once you find it, that beat will not only steady your hand, but your heart as well.” 

“It will stop the memories,” he tried to understand. 

“No, but it will help you filter them. The only way to stop them is to go back into the mindscape, but you’re not ready, and based on what happened last time neither am I.”

“Are we going to talk about it?” Marcus asked while resting one hand on his chest and the other lay between them, not an inch from her own. He had a sudden urge to take her hand, but she pulled away and sprang off the floor with ease, offering her hand to help him to his feet. He didn’t know where the thought had come from, but it stayed there at the forefront of his mind as if it was something shared between them, but unbidden and yet natural.

“No,” Sam said with complete authority. “Not yet.”

Marcus felt the command behind the comment like a weight under his chest. If he pressed the issue further, he would lose her. The memory he saw in her mindscape haunted her more than he could understand, and even though the pieces were there he didn’t have enough information to put them together. He felt the weight of her past as she did, as she felt his, but they didn’t trust each other.

“When?” He pushed.

“When we can determine the difference between our shared emotions, and what we’re experiencing individually,” Sam stated as an absolute. “When I can trust you to understand why I’m doing what I do, and when you can trust me knowing that I’ve told you everything you need to know. Until then I’ll be taking over your training.”

Without a word she flipped her sword onto her foot and sent it flying into her hand. She took a relaxed stance and beckoned Marcus to follow. Hour by hour he measured her movements step by step, until he managed to garner control, and with a last ditch effort, when his arms were so fatigued he couldn’t lift them, and his sword was dragging on the floor she swung for his chest, he side-stepped, ducked under the blow, secured her sword arm against his torso and pulled her tight to him. Face to face, their breathing heavy from the exertion and straining to break either her grip on her sword, or his grip on her arm, Sam snapped her arm up, breaking it at the elbow and slipping it free while dropping her sword into her free hand and directing it up under his ribs. She stopped when the tip had just pierced his flesh. 

“Sometimes you need to do the unexpected move,” she explained as her arm snapped back into place. “You are limited by your understanding of what that body can do, and of what the nanites can do.” Sam demonstrated by taking her sword and swinging it for her own arm. Marcus moved to stop her as the blade made contact with her skin, but instead of slicing her arm clean off the blade shattered. Marcus’s stunned expression made Sam smile just slightly. 

“How?” Marcus picked up a nearby shard of the sword and dropped it immediately as the metal cut into his hand. Sam pressed her own hand against the cut and held it there until it sealed.

“There is much you still need to learn,” she said as she pulled her hand back, his blood warming her skin.

“Show me!”

_Caryx (Origin Planet below Alpha Site) – T – 6 Days_

Abby hadn’t been aboveground since Cyrus dragged her and the others out of that pit. When Tanis pushed her through a four-inch thick metal door she gasped as the light nearly blinded her. Three suns filled the sky each with a slightly different hue of gold, orange, and red. Three suns at various points in their lifespan, but the warmth that swam over her skin made her feel a live for the first time in days. As her eyes adjusted to the blinding light she searched the rubble around her for any sort of landmark they could eventually follow if they managed to get out of the lab, but nothing stood but the capital building behind her. 

A few sounds echoed from the distance, explosions, machinery grinding through the broken rubble strewn over the roads, and a distant lapping of water on rock. Abby focused in on that sound and soon the familiar smell of salt on the breeze confirmed her suspicion. Somewhere nearby was a vast expanse of salt water, and the blue-winged seabird that flew overhead confirmed it for her. The plan was starting to take shape in her mind. 

The soldier’s barracks was a simple shed fitting no more than one hundred at any time. Ramshackle cots and broken tools lay about the floor in no clear pattern of organization. Whatever the underground facility may have appeared to make Cyrus’s forces, the aboveground force itself was a thrown together mix of conscripted recruits, former rebel members identified by the silver falcon tattoo along on their necks, and the members of Earth who had been placed mostly together in a troop with other rebels.  
Abby had spent an hour stitching up Cyrus’s men, barely able to keep ahead of the demand as more and more soldiers were falling to burns caused by both weaponry and whatever chemicals he was storing in a nearby building. Tanis kept careful watch over Abby, barely leaving her side accept to join in on the few combat scenarios being run around the camp. It was apparent by his position and the response of his troops that they feared him, and every time he joined a group Abby soon had another patient under her hands. 

“They learn best through pain,” Tanis sneered as he met her judging stare.

“Whatever you tell yourself at night,” she spat at him. “I need a break.” Abby stood up and moved to leave the barracks, but Tanis was on her before she could step out of the half-cracked door. 

“You aren’t going anywhere,” he breathed into her ear as he pulled her back against him. 

“Don’t touch me,” she shouted as she stomped her boot down onto his foot, feeling the tiny bones crack as she ground and twisted her heel. Tanis roared and released his hold just enough for her to barrel out the door. 

She hid behind a mountain of debris, waited as she heard Tanis shouting orders at his troops to find her. She ran, keeping to the alleyways and abandoned streets following the sound of lapping water as it became louder. The jagged bits of metal and rock from fallen buildings scraped at her legs and arms covering them in bloodied gashes as she snuck through the streets until she finally found it. Rounding a corner, she came face to face with a crystal ocean of water filling her eyes from horizon to horizon. The sand was black and red beneath her feet and crunched as she stepped. 

Closer to the interior she could hear the rapid footsteps of boots following her. She wouldn’t wait. Taking off at a sprint capable of outrunning the fastest land animal alive her legs carried her towards the sand dunes closer to the water’s edge, but when she crested them her heart fell as she came face to face with a garrison of Cyrus’s fully armed soldiers waiting for her. Tanis stood at their lead, his one foot bare, broken, and bruised but she could tell the bones were shifting back into place.  
“You’ll pay for that, and to think you came so close,” he taunted. “Seize her.” The soldiers half-carried, half-dragged her back towards the barracks, dropping her to the concrete floor with as much grace as one would throw out garbage. Tanis crouched beside her, brushed a stray mess of hair from her eyes and smiled before backhanding her across her cheek. “Try again,” he whispered as he pressed himself on top of her. “I look forward to chasing you down.”

Abby spat a mouthful of blood right in his face, but the look in his eyes was all malice and joy. Abby bit back the urge to say something as she rubbed her cheek and eye where a solid bruise was already forming. Tanis stood and left waving for the next group of patients to enter. 

Abby’s eyes lit up when she saw them, but Roan quickly shook his head and mouthed ‘No’. She cast her eyes down and travelled one by one through the beds stitching up deep blade wounds and treating energy burns.

“Hey Doc,” he whispered as Abby placed needle and thread against the laceration across his neck and shoulder. “Three more battalion groups arrived this morning. Numbers in the thousands. He’s bringing them all to us.”

“We may be able to slow them down,” Abby hushed. “I found a way out.”

“Not the ocean route, trust me. Ask Diyoza.” Abby hadn’t spoken to Charmaine Diyoza since she’s been dragged from the stasis chamber. She’d heard from the others that she’s already killed two of the lead commanders and Cyrus had subdued her himself using some sort of tech. 

Abby stood by the elevated table Diyoza was laid upon her arms and legs strapped to the table. She examined the blade wounds across her abdomen and legs. 

“We’re you trying to get yourself killed,” Abby scolded as she worked meticulously on each wound, pinching, and sealing skin. She noticed the fresh incision site below the back of her head right along the spinal cord, and the slight glow beneath the skin. An explosive maybe, she thought. The forces on the ground seemed unimportant to Cyrus and the nanotech in their bodies was proof enough. It was substandard and minimal, barely keeping them in one piece as they tore at each other. Abby had overheard Tanis institute physical upgrades as some sort of reward program. Victory would ensure an upgraded clone with higher capability nanotech. It was a good plan, with one exception. They weren’t counting on Abby and the others. 

“What’s the matter Doc, would you miss me?” Diyoza lifted her head just high enough to see her own wounds. “Don’t worry. I’ve had far worse.”

“I’m sorry for what happened,” Abby said barely loud enough for her to here.

“I don’t need your sympathy,” Diyoza growled. “Just fix me up and get me back out there.”

“Roan said not to use the water route, why?” Abby asked gathering every bit of intel she could.

“There’s a squad posted in the abandoned tower about a kilometre south of the dunes. They see everything on that beach. We wouldn’t make it ten feet.”

“We’ll find another way,” Abby assured.

“Whatever way, when we go, I’m pushing the button that sends these fuckers sky high. Understood.”

Abby couldn’t respond as the guards had begun to approach her for loitering too long. She nodded and gently placed the same piece of torn cloth into Diyoza’s grip, her response written on the opposite side. 

Abby was shuffled out the door and back towards the entrance to the underground facility. The guards moved beside her quickly when rapid heel falls started in her direction. Abby looked in time to find Octavia leap into the air, two energy shells already electrifying her embedded in her right shoulder, and slice two quick, clean slashes through the throats of the guards. 

“Run!” She yelled at Abby as they took off towards the radioactive zone. They ran for thirty minutes straight, full speed, before their legs gave out. 

“Octavia, this isn’t the plan,” Abby gasped while trying to catch her breath. Her chest ached and her throat was dryer than the desert. 

“Roan said we needed a distraction. Now they have one. Try to show a little gratitude.” Octavia was covered in the arterial blood spray of the two guards, and in a move reminiscent of Bloodreina, she smeared the residual blood across her face. 

“I need to get back into the lab.” Abby was furious at Octavia’s rash decision making again putting all of them at risk. 

“You will, but first we need to find this.” Octavia pulled a datapad out from the armour fixed to her chest and switched on the main screen. “One of the rebels doesn’t agree with Cyrus or his plans. He gave us this.”

Abby looked over the designs. It was an incomplete schematic blueprint of the capital building and the tunnel system underneath including the lab. It was missing certain sections, including any additional exits or entrances, but it was a start. “This could get us out.”

“Yeah, yeah, we gotta go.” Octavia crouched behind a pillar but could already see the beams of light from the rifles pointing in their direction. “They’ve caught up. Run!”

“Octavia, this rebel could be our inside man, who is it?”

“Some guy name Kai, has a tattoo on the back of his right hand.” Octavia responded just as she was shot mid-chest. They energy round went right through her chest and out the other side. 

“No,” Abby screamed as she pressed her hands to the hole. The heat from the round had sealed the wound, but the damage was still internal having gone straight through her heart. Octavia choked and sputtered as blood drowned her lungs. “Hang on. You don’t get to die today.”

The guards fanned out around them watching and waiting as Octavia choked on her own blood until her body went limp. Tanis scuffed his feet animatedly across the grit on the street like he was dancing to his own little tune. 

“Told you,” he laughed as he grabbed Abby by the hair and dragged her to her feet. “You make my job so worthwhile.” He didn’t let go as he tugged her in the direction of the underground entrance. Abby had already secured the datapad inside her pants. She only hoped Tanis didn’t decide to frisk her for the fun of it. The guards behind dragged Octavia by her legs to the infirmary. “Patch her up, and get her back to work,” Abby heard Tanis yell. Abby smiled knowing that the worst thing in the world these idiots could do was patch up Charmaine Diyoza and Octavia Blake, but that’s what they were doing. Those two together, Caryx wouldn’t stand a chance.


	12. Preparation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marcus's abilities grow and his curiosity gets the better of him. Abby's plans take shape.

_Alpha Site: T – 3 Days_

The Coliseum was bustling with different squadrons running through various infiltration scenarios, everything from a direct impact breach on one of Alpha Site’s many levels to an inside insurgency. They had to be prepared for every eventuality and Caleb made sure they were. He watched over the lower training arenas cycling between the soldiers he would command directly and the those who would be responsible for the rest. Caleb was a cautious man, pragmatic, albeit impetuous at times. He trusted in the Colonel’s strategies, but he wasn’t so sure about her current state of mind. 

Caleb stood watching as the Colonel ran the stranger through drill after drill, testing his reflexes and response times against various attack and defense patterns. Marcus moved well, adapting to her maneuvers as if he could read them. Caleb was a staunch defender of Sam, and would die to protect her, and watching her lower her guard whether purposefully or not to this stranger didn’t bring him any sort of serenity. They traded attacks at the edge of the arena, barely aware of anything else around them. 

It wasn’t her movements, her gesticulations when she was explaining something to him, or her calculating stare as they sparred that gave Caleb pause. It was the bright smile that seemed to shine out from her core and light up the space around the two of them. Caleb hadn’t seen Sam smile in centuries, not really smile anyway, and now here, at all times, to a stranger. It gave him pause. 

“Major,” Saryn’s voice called from across the room. “We’re ready to test them out?” Saryn had been busy since the initial attacks on Caryx planning and constructing the newest high-grade tools and weapons they could implement. She presented them with what Caleb could call absolute glee. A full squadron of fifty Paladins surrounded her on the Coliseum main field as she attached two silver cuffs to her wrists and tapped a small gold prism on the underside. 

“Okay, here we go.” Saryn waited a couple seconds while the cuffs charged up and then she smashed them together. A blinding flash lit up the arena like a solar flare drawing all eyes to the centre. Caleb glanced briefly at Sam and Marcus, and shook his head as neither paid any attention to the commotion around Saryn. When the light dimmed Saryn was covered from neck to ankle in what seemed to be a liquid state sterling armor that glistened as it rippled. 

“Explain Lieutenant,” Caleb ordered. 

“It’s a metalloid armor based off the very nanotech within our bodies,” she said, excitement evident from her heavy breathing. “The nanites that normally encourage cellular regrowth and healing instead emerge through the skin and form an impenetrable barrier between us and any energy-based weaponry.”

“If the tech that heals are wounds is suddenly occupied with protecting us, wouldn’t that be counter-intuitive?” Caleb asked.

“How do you mean?” She inquired.

“Any injury we sustain we won’t recover immediately,” Caleb worried. “It would leave our forces vulnerable.”

Saryn smirked as she grabbed an energy rifle from one of the Paladins beside her and threw it into Caleb’s waiting hands. “Try me!” Saryn opened both arms wide exposing her chest and baiting Caleb to fire. Four quick shots rang out, echoing off the silence that had befallen the arena as everyone watched. The bolts of energy had landed at the exact points Caleb wanted them to, but they hadn’t struck flesh. The armor shimmered and rippled as they hit absorbing into the material like a droplet into a lake. Saryn was untouched. “Phew, yeah kind of glad that worked.”

Caleb just shook his head at her recklessness. “How did you come up with something like this?”

“I’m brilliant,” she bowed dramatically and winked at Nias who had appeared beside her, his shoulders tense and apprehensive as she brushed her fingers over the armor examining it for any possible creases or cracks the shots might have caused. Nias exhaled slowly as he found her safe. 

“And as humble as they come,” Sam yelled as she approached them, Marcus close behind her. Saryn blushed ever so slightly, but Caleb’s concern was completely hidden, his face a dull calm, well completely hidden from all except Sam who placed a hand on his shoulder as she entered the centre of the arena. 

“The Colonel might have had something to do with the planning,” Saryn admitted. 

“It’s alright Lieutenant,” Sam encouraged her. “It was a brilliant idea and it will protect us regardless of how many soldiers they swarm this facility with. They may have superior numbers, but we have superior tactics, we know the terrain, and with great minds like yours we won’t be beaten.”

“Absolutely. That was defensive mode,” Saryn tapped the prism and it turned red. “And this is attack mode.” Sections of the armour congealed together into ellipsoidal discs and broke off hovering a couple inches around her body. Saryn twisted her wrists quickly and a disc shot out from its position and embedded itself in the gun Caleb was holding draining the power from the ammo cell and rendering it useless. With another quick couple flicks of her fingers the disc sawed through it and then returned to its original position over her right shoulder. “Oh and they’re magnetic, so no ammunition required.”

The Paladins cheered as Sam gently dismissed them recruiting Nias to spar with Marcus while she dealt with other matters. She wrapped an arm around Saryn’s shoulders and gently pushed her towards the main entrance. “Back to it Lieutenant. We may have an advantage now, but it will take work to get that program into every person on this station.”

“Understood ma’am,” Saryn agreed. “I’ll meet you in medical later then.” Sam nodded and turned away to come face to face with Caleb’s deadpanned stare. Sam simply tilted her head towards the elevated platform where they would be secured from any prying ears. 

Sam stood, her back to the arena as Caleb followed her onto the stage. He smirked, crossing his arms casually as she leaned against the centre chair waiting for the inevitable.

“You two have looked pretty inseparable lately,” he accused as the slight tilt of his head swung his shaggy hair over his eyes. 

“I’m training him, nothing more.”

“Really, is that all,” Caleb laughed as he pushed off the pillar he was leaning on and stood arms crossed eyebrows raised, clearly judging her answer.

“Don’t poke around blindly,” she said, straightforward as always. “If you have a concern voice it.”

“Fine. I think you’re getting too close to him.” Caleb shifted back and forth from his right to left foot as if that could help the wobbly footing he was placing himself on. “I think your relationship with him will affect your judgement, when the time comes.”

“There is no relationship Major,” she stood, towering a little over him. “Don’t be so foolish as to think you have any insight into my actions besides what I tell you.”

“Well that’s just delusional,” Caleb stated, a grim line drawing his forehead together. “I know you Sam.”

“You’re out of line Major,” she moved to leave. Caleb was anticipating her actions. She wasn’t one to flee from any fight except for the one fight she could never win. The fight with a truth she could never admit. 

“Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me you haven’t been staring at the same surface images from Caryx I have for the past week, knowing that those people are down there. Tell me you don’t think that telling him will change things between you. Tell me that Saryn hasn’t specifically told you which memory engrams Cyrus stole and embedded in those clones. Tell me you’ve told him any of this.”

Sam couldn’t meet his penetrating gaze. Caleb had known her for hundreds of years, they’d served together in battle, she saved his life, he’d saved hers, and if there was one person alive who knew her it would be him. Sam’s shoulders visibly sunk as she surrendered to the inevitable.

“You’re not wrong,” she admitted. “And I already know why Cyrus would use them. I know him better than anyone alive, and he’s aware that if he plans this battle, he’ll lose. Moves and countermoves but all predictable when he’s concerned, so yes I know what Cyrus is doing and that it would affect Marcus if he knew.”

“But you still won’t tell him.”

“If your primary concern is that this will affect my judgement, you can be sure it won’t. When it comes time to decide if I let them die, or eliminate them myself, either way this will end. All of it.”

Caleb looked out to the arena watching Marcus manage to flip Nias on to his back before being knocked off his feet, recovering and standing toe to toe with the giant. Caleb couldn’t deny his progress had been impressive since Sam took over his training, but he still couldn’t figure out why she wanted him trained so badly. 

“You know you smiled today,” Caleb barely whispered. “I haven’t seen you genuinely do that in a long time. I do want you to be happy, and I’m glad he’s bringing you some peace, but not in the middle of all this.”

Sam’s demeanor shifted. The cold veneer she’d lived with for so long slammed hard back into place as she placed herself directly in front of Caleb. “Do not pretend to know my mind. I trust you Caleb, but don’t interfere in what you don’t understand.” Without waiting for a response, she left. 

Marcus dodged Nias’s jabs and hooks, paying careful attention to his murderous right hook. He swore he wouldn’t get caught with that again. They’d been sparring for the better part of an hour, Marcus’s uniform was soaked through with sweat while Nias was a cool as snow, but Marcus thought it was time to try something. He felt the warm air fill his lungs as he took a deep breath. The tingling in his limbs made his fingers twitch as he felt the familiar sensation of his attribute waking up. It only took a second before the red circle around his eyes glowed brightly, but Nias was already in mid-swing before he noticed it. 

It was as if the world stopped spinning. The arena itself, normally chaotic and busy, sounded muffled, as if his head was underwater. Marcus could see the fourth level of colours flowing around them almost musically, hues his normal eyes would have never seen suddenly painting warm hues across his vision. It was fantastic. 

His focus locked in on Nias, his right fist mere inches away from his nose, before Marcus shifted his weight onto his left foot, dodging outside Nias’s strike. Marcus felt like he had all the time in the world. He could watch his opponents arm fully extend and retract, dodging it effortlessly. Every attack Nias tried, Marcus saw coming ages before it reached him. After examining the timeframe between when his opponent started his attack to when he needed to avoid it, he launched his counterattack, pushing Nias back with a flurry of straight punches and low kicks until he was backed against the arena wall. 

Marcus thought he finally had him when his straight punch connected with a cross block Nias was using in front of his face, until his knuckles near shattered inside his fist. Marcus pulled back in pain, coddling his broken hand against his chest while blood dripped through his fingers from small slashes. Nias stood to his full height and shook his arms off, as Marcus finally got a look at what caused his injury. Nias’s forearms were covered in knuckle-sized armored rust coloured scales that fluttered as he brushed the shards of the ones Marcus hit off his arm and new ones grew in their place.

“Now that’s just not fair,” Marcus grimaced as his fingers were attempting to snap back into place.

“You almost had me,” Nias admitted while sliding down and sitting back against the arena wall. Marcus joined him as the skin across his fingers stitched itself back together. 

“That’s why you don’t show your attribute,” Marcus grumbled. He shook his hand a couple times flexing and extending his fingers to see if they were back to normal. The internal wounds had healed but the surface bleeding and bruising was taking longer. 

“Never reveal an advantage before you use it,” Nias instructed.

“The Colonel probably taught you that.”

“Yes. You should’ve hardened your fists.”

“I didn’t want to run the risk,” Marcus said as the swelling in his hand finally subsided.

“It’s a gamble, but paired with your attribute could only be an advantage.”

Marcus shook his head. “Only if I’m fast enough. If I allocate nanites to an offensive position, and the weakness is found, a shot there could be fatal, or debilitating enough to let myself be captured.”

“You’re assuming capture is their goal,” Nias said as his scales began to retract back under his skin. He brushed his callused hands over his arms to wipe any dusty remnants away.

“You’re saying it wouldn’t be.”

Nias stood and offered a hand to help Marcus up. “Cyrus’s forces are not the kind to take prisoners. Remember that.” 

Marcus may have started on rocky footing with Nias, but their friendship had grown into something closer to brothers. They ate together on most occasions usually with Saryn close by. There was a fondness between the two that he’d noticed from the start but over the course of his time on Alpha Site he knew it was more. Marcus recognized the yearning looks across the mess table, the subtle glances when in the same room, the gentle touches when they thought no one was looking, and the all to obvious escapes from public spaces to be alone. He thought fondly of his time experiencing those first knowing looks, learning and understanding how far he would go for another person. Marcus missed her, and she was right, he would’ve given everything he had to have her back. 

The night staff in C&C had become used to seeing Marcus stroll in the past few days so they paid him no mind when he approached her office door and punched in the keycode he had memorized. The door slid sideways and shut quickly behind him as he entered the dim room. She wasn’t in. Marcus walked across the room slid the biometric panel aside, slid his wrist into position and waited for the common bite that came with the bloodletting needed to get into her quarters. She’d made it clear to him that there were only two others on all of Alpha Site that new how to get into her quarters, so if anything went missing she knew where to start. As the room spun slowly to reveal the twin staircase he found himself wondering where the other side of the stairs went. The tiny voice in the back of his mind that threatened horrible consequences should he be caught somewhere he shouldn’t be did nothing to assuage his curiosity. 

Marcus turned left and cautiously rounded the bend to a dead-end wall covered in silver dust particles that glistened off the light from the sensor in his wrist. The wall was cold under his palm and sent a gentle shiver through his body. It didn’t make sense to have a staircase that went nowhere, but he knew by now that Sam protected things she didn’t want known. He trailed his hands over the solid stone searching for any indication of an entrance until he felt it, an infinitesimal rise in temperature under his right hand close to the edge of the wall. He pressed his fingers flat and a square section the size of a book slid back and popped out enough for him to wedge his hand inside and find a latch. Wrapping his fingers around it he pushed down and a loud clank unlocked something behind the wall. 

Something slammed shut around him, holding him in place and twisting tight while small blades circled his wrists. He tried to pulled back but the wall had him locked in place. The blood leaked out of the hole onto the floor at his feet, and he was having a hard time keeping himself upright as he felt nausea and dizziness wash over him. He was losing too much blood. Marcus had learned Sam’s schedule by now and she wouldn’t be back from medical until late into the night, and even she returned looking tired and drained. He didn’t know how much longer he could last before he bled out.

“Shit,” he wavered as his legs wobbled and collapsed underneath him. “Well this was a dumb idea.” Marcus blacked out. 

_Caryx (Origin Planet below Alpha Site) – T – 3 Days_

It took three attempts, three possible escapes, before Cyrus swore to make good on his promise to harm Clarke for her actions. He had her pod open and a gun at her head before Abby broke and pledged not to try again, not that words would really stop her, but she knew they needed a better plan. The one true thing she finally understood about Cyrus was that he had played his cards too early. After all, if Clarke was the only leverage he had over her, then threatening to kill her was a miscalculation on his part. If he did kill Clarke, Abby would have no reason to help them. 

Abby had taken to sleeping in the stasis chamber since then, studying the pods as often as she could and ensuring that nothing would happen to Clarke. It wasn’t long before sleep would take her, or Cyrus’s men would put her and the others back to work.

They were running out of time and all of them could feel it. Raven’s body had started going into global organ shutdown after they injected her one to many times with a stimulant, Octavia had made a full recovery but the wear and tear on her body and the others was starting to show. Their muscles were atrophying, their skin hung loose and grey against their withering bones, and the once fiercest of warriors were being laid bare after barely being able to stand. Cyrus pulled them out of the barracks and locked them in the lab quarters just outside the main section of the facility. 

They were watched at all times, so communication was difficult, and the missing patches of clothing were getting more difficult to hide, but they were in agreement on one thing. If they didn’t do something within the next two days they would all surely die. The soldiers had taken to guarding the upper section of the lab since there was nowhere they could go now that the lower level had been completely sealed. It left them almost completely alone in the lab. 

Abby stood over slides of organic cells that were degrading before her eyes. She tried a million different combinations of synthetic and organic treatments to try and get the cell membrane to maintain its structure and not burst under stress, but to no avail. No matter what she did it failed. Jackson started experiencing seizure inducing migraines that wracked his body with convulsions until Abby was able to inject him with a sedative. 

Two days, she thought. They would only have two days, and it would be impossible to solve Cyrus’s problem even if they had more time. They would have no choice but to run, but to where and how while they were weakening seemed like an insurmountable task. 

Abby paced back and forth in the stasis chamber reading a mechanical manual on the operations of the pods. Raven and Sinclair had already been over it a dozen times and knew how the pods worked inside and out. They could probably build one with the right parts. Abby looked at the four active pods at the back end of the chamber that still had bodies in them, but she couldn’t tell who as the tempered glass was frosted over and the data pads had been removed. 

“Abby,” Jake called from the entrance. Abby jumped as she spun around hearing his voice. Even days later having him alive and here startled her. It made it all feel like some sort of dream or nightmare, she couldn’t tell which, whether she was being tormented with her daughter imprisoned or her once dead husband standing in front of her, but she couldn’t save them and they would all die anyway. 

“I can’t fix this,” she cried softly as the book dropped from her hands. “I don’t know what to do.”

Jake caught her as she started to fall, her legs giving out under the weight of it all. “Come back to the bunks for a bit,” he soothed. “We’ll figure this out.” Abby choked back the little bit of food she had eaten that day as it threatened to come back up. Her stomach had been roiling for the past three days since the injections started. 

The lab quarters were cramped, sterile, and barren of anything denoting a lived-in environment but it didn’t matter. The group took what little solace they could in being together, as comfortable as they could be, and getting the chance to sleep, if only for a couple hours at a time. Octavia and Roan slept closest to the door, both determined to take any advantage in a fight if that’s what it came to. 

They’d all been given grey, tattered uniforms to replace the blood-soaked ones they all had after Diyoza had body sores erupt all over her body, bursting and bleeding on everyone who helped to stop the bleeding. She recovered but couldn’t be touched and rarely moved if she didn’t have to. Diyoza described anything touching her like dull sandpaper being scraped across her skin.

Jake shifted a pillow aside and placed Abby faceup on the tiny bunk, sitting on the concrete floor beside her, never releasing her hand. Abby watched the others mumble to each other, their voices barely carrying to her as her eyes drifted closed. She didn’t want to stay awake, but when she felt a warm hand shake her right arm she didn’t have a choice.

“Abby wake up,” Raven rushed out. “We have a plan.”

“What?” Abby groaned. 

“You need to hear this,” Raven insisted, helping Jake raise her into a seated position on the edge of the bunk. Abby was happy to have Jake holding onto her. She wasn’t sure she could stay upright at the moment. 

Jaha sat opposite her, grim and tired, but his eyes spoke volumes about the resoluteness of his cause. He wasn’t going to allow them to fail here. “Abby, we think we can get out.”

“Tell me,” she groaned as a pounding headache resounded behind her eyes, and chills began to course through her veins. Jake pulled her against his side as if trying to lend her his warmth, it worked, somewhat. 

“They’ve built eight move devices,” Sinclair explained. “But we had extra time in their tech lab to build something else.”

“I had extra time you mean,” Raven chimed in. “Abby check these out.” Raven pulled a small clear cylinder from inside her bra and handed it to Abby. “The tech here is incredible, but I bet they never thought of applying a water purifier and converting it into an oxygenator.”

Abby looked confused. “Abby, I built a hand held underwater breathing apparatus. One for each of us.” Abby pinched the bridge of her nose trying to numb the pain in her head, but waved her hand to indicate they should continue. 

“Based on Diyoza, Roan, and Octavia’s reconnaissance the ocean is our only way out,” Jaha explained as he pulled out the datapad Octavia recovered from their spy inside. “It’s guarded, but not if we take this route here.” His finger ghosted over the screen drawing the image closer and revealing a subservice tunnel that led into a small storm drain out of the facility and into the ocean directly. “We follow this route, we swim outside the range of the watchtower, and we’re free.”

“We’ll need to leave when the suns set,” Roan whispered. “Their only down for an hour at most, so that’s our window.”

“Yeah, yeah big man, hold on,” Raven teased. “We still need to get out of here.”

“We’ll take care of that,” Octavia said as she glanced at Diyoza. “There’s a weapons cash outside this lab. Advanced tech that they aren’t using on the surface. We just need to get to storage.”

“Wait,” Abby shushed them. “What about my daughter, and the others in stasis? We’re not leaving them behind. Raven can you build more of these?” She asked as she lifted the breathing apparatus. 

“I can, but I’d need to get back in the lab.”

“I can help with that,” Sinclair interrupted. “Jake and I are scheduled to run a system’s check on the devices tomorrow. We can request your assistance.”

“I won’t be strong enough to carry the gear anymore,” Raven sighed as she felt the need to point out she could barely lift her left arm anymore due to the muscle wasting.  
“I am,” Roan suggested. “Your brain, my body.”

“Well thanks big guy,” Raven smiled.

“Don’t call me that,” Roan demanded, but it did nothing to hide the brief glint in Raven’s eye as she poked fun at him. 

“Enough,” Abby huffed. “All of this doesn’t matter if we can’t get out of this room.”

“You’ve already solved that problem,” Jackson beamed the biggest smile she’d seen on him in days. “Earlier this week you tried recombining a combination of plant life in order to stabilize the gene sequence in one of the test cells.”

“It didn’t work,” Abby sighed. 

“Not that way, but it did something else remember,” Jackson looked like the proverbial cat that ate the canary.

Abby looked up and smiled. “It subdued the cell’s mitochondria inhibiting its ability to create energy. It knocked it out.”

“If we could find a way to aerosolize it within the next two days we could knock out everyone in this facility,” Sinclair nodded. “That’s genius.”

“Thank you,” Raven grinned. “My idea.”

“Do you ever stop…” Roan groaned at her.

“Being brilliant no,” Raven interrupted. Abby smirked at the interaction having seen the two of them banter over the past week, she could tell there was more to it, but nothing could be done right now. They still needed to survive first.

“Alright, alright, but what about us?” Abby asked. Raven just waved the breathing apparatus. They would be safe to breathe the aerosolized sedative with the purifiers filtering the air. This could work she thought, hoping against hope that something may actually go their way. “When do we go?”

“They’ve been planning an assault for days now,” Diyoza said. “We thought we were originally supposed to fight with them, but I think they were just learning our battle tactics.”

“How do you know that?” Jaha inquired.

Diyoza eyed him. “We were constantly subjected to different scenarios of combat while on the surface. Different terrains, enemy weaponry, two-on-ones, three-on-ones, you get the picture.”

“That’s where all the wounded came from,” Abby realized.

“Sorry Doc,” Diyoza said swinging her legs slowly over the side of her bunk. “When they got to six-on-one I guess I just wasn’t fast enough anymore.” Octavia rolled her eyes.  
“I got there without being beaten to a pulp,” Octavia gloated. 

“Down little rabbit,” Diyoza said taunting Octavia. “We’ll decide who’s better on safer ground.” Octavia shrugged. “It didn’t matter when they brought us back here either. Everyday they take us to another section full of computers and we’re put through endless simulations.”

“They want to know how we think,” Abby concluded. 

“More specifically how we fight,” Diyoza corrected. 

“So, we wait,” Abby suggested. “If what they’re planning is happening in three days then that’s when we go. They’ll be occupied elsewhere, but my worry is we won’t last that long.”

“I’ve been toying with the stimulant they’ve been giving us,” Jackson interjected. “I think I can bond it to a couple of the plant cells in the lab that are restorative. It could buy us a little more time, at least to get out of here.”

Abby looked around at the group, steadfast and certain that their plan could work. Abby almost laughed outright at the ridiculousness of it all. “Alright, we need to secure the supplies we need, build the extra breathing apparatuses, recover the people in the stasis chamber, create an aerosolized toxin that will knock out everyone in this facility except us, escape through a tunnel barely wide enough for a large child, create a restorative drug that will keep us alive until then, and do this all without getting caught. That about cover it?”

“Sounds right,” Raven nodded laughing at the insurmountable odds they were up against. “What could possibly go wrong?”


	13. Plans Within Plans

_Alpha Site: T – 2 Days_

Marcus stirred from his dreams feeling the fabric restraints on his arms pull at the fresh lacerations on his wrists. They stung from wrist to elbow, a million tiny bee stings, piercing into his flesh as he tried to free his hands. The bright blue light of the medical wing made him squint as a headache erupted behind his eyes, but the cold metal against his bare skin was worse, sending sharp shivers through his limbs to his spine.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Sam’s voice crept over the glass that enclosed him. He’d been there before, recognized the familiar pod he woke up in the first time, the restraints on his wrists holding him in place as Sam gave instructions to the same tech who originally woke him up. Deja-vu all over again. 

Marcus tried to speak but his throat seized, dry and coarse, as if all the fluid from his body had been removed. The glass unsealed beside him and sunk back into the other side exposing his naked body to the frigid air around the room. Sam tossed thick black pants to him as Jansen scurried out of the room. She hid the slight blush that crept up her neck, pulling the collar of her uniform jacket higher, and even though she’d never been shy about what she wanted, confronted with a naked Marcus in front of her, again, made her pulse race. 

“You’ll have to forgive Jansen,” Sam said giving a disapproving glance at the tech as he ran out the door. “After you threw him across the room the first time you two met, he’s a little nervous around you.”

“Why do I always wake up in this room naked?” Marcus shivered as he rushed to pull the pants on. 

“Because you do incomprehensibly stupid things that land you back in a regeneration pod.” Sam growled, trying without success to hide her simmering anger. “Are you trying to get yourself killed? If so, there are easier methods.”

Marcus had seen Sam calm, calculating, and steady. He’d seen her anger slip through her vault of control, but he’d never seen this reaction before. She had been worried. She still was.

“It was a mistake,” he admitted.

“You think,” Sam said as she paced the space in front of him, her hands alternating between being crossed over her chest or laced behind her back. It was as if she was trying to hold back from coming to close to him. “A mistake would be an understatement. You died Marcus. You bled out right there, on the floor in front of my lab.”

“What?” He remembered losing consciousness, but he didn’t think he could have slipped past conscious thought into death so easily. His fingers traced the deep white scars that circled his wrists.

“If it wasn’t for this,” Sam said as she lifted a singed ring sized circle, “You would be dead.” She threw it at his chest, spun on her heel, and found the nearest wall to press her hands into, gripping the slight imperfections in the metal and bending them with the stress from her grip. “Caryx damn you Marcus Kane. You almost destroyed everything, and for what, curiosity.”

“I’m sorry,” Marcus nodded, but his patience was wearing just as thin. “But for someone who talks about trust, you hide much. Secrets on top of secrets, only giving just what needs to be revealed and nothing more. You think I haven’t noticed the injection sites on your arms, or how you come to training looking like the life has been drained out of you, or how about the fact that your so-called lab has a security failsafe that would kill anyone who tried to enter it.”

“Oh, and you don’t have things you’re keeping from me,” Sam growled. “Trust goes both ways.”

“There’s not much I can hide from you though is there,” Marcus argued. “After all you only need to push into my mind and take a trip through my memories to get the information you want.”

That caught Sam off guard. She never entered a conversation, an argument, or a battle without a firm grasp on the potential directions they could take, but she never thought he’d accuse her of that. Her shoulders deflated somewhat as she rolled a metal chair over to where he still sat on his pod, pulling a kit of tools out of a drawer beside it and placing them on the pod beside him.

“You know I’d never do that,” she sighed. “Our memories are sacred. They’re what make us who we are, and without them we’re nothing. I would never presume to steal yours.” She unlocked the kit, lifting the lid and revealing two more of the circular devices that she said had saved his life along with a laser sharp scalpel and another silver cylinder no larger than a pen. “Now this may sting a bit.”

Marcus caught her wrist wielding the scalpel before it could near his skin. “Do you trust me?”

Sam’s stern expression was unwavering. “Can I trust the man who tried to steal my own secrets?” She pulled her wrist free and felt along the underside of his collarbone, tracing a recent scar with her fingers. 

“I didn’t know…”

“You didn’t know you’d get caught,” Sam interjected before he could finish.

Marcus pushed on. “I didn’t know it would hurt you.” The scalpel froze before it found his flesh. Sam met his apologetic gaze, and the confusion in her swirled like a storm. She turned her attention back to her task and drew the blade across the healed pink scar under the bone. Marcus hissed as she peeled back three layers of tissue, fascia, and muscle to reveal the clavicle before clamping the skin in place to keep the incision site open. 

“What are you doing?” Marcus bit back as his fingers gripped the pod edge. 

“Replacing the transport node you fried,” she said as she slid another disc through the skin and affixed it to the bone. “If your vitals ever drop to critical it automatically transports you here. One-use short-range site-to-site transport. That’s why you’re still alive.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t waste this one,” she chastised as she slipped the scalpel into a sterilization chamber along the underside of the pod with the bloody cloth she’d been using to stem the blood flow. “We only have the one left, and can’t construct more until back on Caryx.”

Sam pushed back the chair and made to leave before Marcus managed to block her path. “Wait, please. You’ve been going above and beyond to protect me, but you still haven’t told me why, or what you’re protecting me from.”

“You’re important.”

“You still haven’t told me why,” Marcus pressed not allowing her the room to leave. He could practically feel the heat from her body radiating around him. They needed to have this conversation and Marcus wasn’t going to let it go so easily. He leaned in closer his breath a warm caress across her cheek. 

Sam considered him. It would only take a moment to disable him, but after days of training him he’d see that coming. They had grown to know each other’s movements. It wouldn’t be that easy. His eyes were already shifting into their attribute state, glinting with just the tiniest hint of red, and hers matched his, sparking to life and ringed with gold. A fight wouldn’t serve them at this point. Sam stepped back and took a deep breath as if the action would release the tension building within her. 

“I don’t think you’re ready,” Sam said. “I don’t know if you’ll understand. I don’t think I can explain it all.”

Marcus kept his distance allowing her the space to make the decision, but all he wanted to do was assure her. His hand twitched at his side, the thought swimming in his mind to take hers. A gesture, nothing more, calming and friendly, meant only to encourage Sam to have faith in him. The smallest move, that’s all it would take, but not to be realized as she stepped away towards an alternate exit. 

“Sam,” Marcus whispered. He knew it was risky, using her name changed the terrain they had been skirting. It was always Colonel. Nias was his superior but he never berated Marcus for using his name. Saryn didn’t care, but both of them were adamant that Sam was the Colonel and always would be. Using her name was equivalent to opening a locked door and whatever happened he was still determined to walk through it. “If you can’t tell me, then show me.”

“We’d have to go back to the beginning,” she explained. “I still don’t know if you’re ready. The small glimpses we’ve attempted in training would be nothing like this. If your mind started to drift…”

“I’ll be careful,” he assured her finally reaching out and taking her hand. “Trust me.”

Sam pondered the predicament and settled on a test first. “If you think you’re ready then you have to beat me at Quinus first.”

“No, come on,” Marcus shook his head. “That’s hardly fair.”

“That’s how it’s done. You set the challenge, but I set the terms. One game, winner take all. You win and I’ll tell you everything. I win and you leave it alone. Agreed?”

Marcus just shook his head and let out a long, exasperated breath. “Fine. You’re not giving me much of a choice.”

“There’s always a choice, and you’re making it.” 

The march back to her quarters didn’t take long. He glanced left down the curved stair as she rolled her eyes at him before nudging him right. The thought of not repeating the same mistakes already ricocheting around in his brain. The embers of a previously lit fire stoked to life as soon as they entered illuminating the centre table and upon it the game he needed to win. 

It felt unusual to step over the training circles without at least sparring first. That had become their norm, constantly battling for superiority within the small space. At first Marcus had thought the activity strenuous and pointless, however over the past few days a type of mirrored symmetry began taking shape between his last life and this one. The visions of his past had slowed their interference into his daily life to the point where he only saw brief glimpses of them before he managed to dislodge them. Marcus didn’t know what the future held, what with a battle a few days away, and his mind still in a state of disarray, but for the first time since he woke up, he felt a sense of belonging with those around him and a desire to be part of them. 

The board was exactly how they’d left it, three tiers already set, sixteen squares on each, black, white, and red indicating the three tiers of play and the three types of pieces. Marcus had suggested it reminded him of a chess board but was quickly corrected when Sam started teaching him the finer intricacies of the game. Sam had been using the game to help Marcus focus while within his mindscape. It helped filter his thoughts and memories while his focus shifted to controlling his gameplay as Sam strategically wiped him out again and again. Marcus had been confused by the strange names of the pieces initially, and although he’d since learned them properly he kept calling each piece by its alternate chess name. There were pawns, and rooks, knights, queens, and kings. Each piece could switch between any of the three tiers at any time, but the strategy of the game relied on anticipating the changes the board would make when it changed three-dimensionally, either stranding your pieces or uniting them into one front. It would determine the outcome of the game in a single switch if he was lucky, which he’d never been yet. 

Marcus pressed the sensor in his wrist synchronizing his nanites with Sam and the room dissolved around them revealing a white sandy shore, gentle waves lapping at the rocks ridged by a vast evergreen tree line, and a bright yellow sun bathing the scene in a warm glow. 

“Hm, nice choice of view,” Sam said glancing around at the bay and the memory of Mecha station’s first landing. “Your move.” Marcus glanced down and blinked as he noticed Sam had already moved her pieces. The gameplay was fast and vicious, her attacking and defending pieces simultaneously while forcing him to move his attacking pieces to increasingly more dangerous positions. They’d agreed not to use their attributes to ensure the game was fair but he could never catch her. 

The scene around them blended like a swirling canvas shifting from the Ark in space to Polis and back to Arkadia more times then Marcus could count. His memories playing out around them as he deflected his thoughts from them to the board between them. Sam kept her eyes glued to him more than the board, but it didn’t change the result. The only thing that ever drew her gaze was a red arch that appeared each time his memory shifted, only for a moment before vanishing into the scenery as if never there to begin with. Sam wondered at the origin of the structure since it didn’t seem to belong in any of his memories. The constant irregularity shouldn’t exist, but she had learned from her own memories that the random was never truly random. 

“Don’t feel too disappointed Marcus,” Sam said as she knocked his last attacking piece from the third tier aligning her Queen with his final piece. “It was along shot anyway. Think of it like our enemy on the ground. He has to attack, he has no choice. His power isn’t secure while I live. Cyrus either needs to kill me, or have me submit to him, which will never happen.”

“Don’t you think the same,” Marcus said as he examined the three boards trying to predict when the next field shift would be. 

“No,” Sam said as if it were an irrefutable fact. “I reserve no possibility of submission. He will die.”

“Why not find the third option?” Marcus suggested as a plan began to form in his mind, visualizing the pieces moving over the board toward a victory he hadn’t seen before.

“You may not agree, but it is an indisputable fact that some conflicts can only be solved with a war.”

“Spoken like someone whose never truly known peace in her life,” he countered as he shifted his pieces around the board. 

“Have you?” She pressed cornering two of his attacking pieces before the board shifted the top and middle rows stranding her Queen. 

“Once or twice in my life,” he smiled the memories swirling around them becoming the moments of Marcus’s life he found the most joy. The tower of Polis ensconced within the mountains on Earth, the sun starting its descent in the afternoon behind it, Abby beside him, Indra meeting them in the marketplace. It was only a moment but it was one he cherished. “I don’t believe a war solves anything. It sounds more like vengeance than justice.”

“If I wanted revenge I would be trapped in an endless loop, a life for a life for eternity. I let go of my past, but I still need to answer for it.”

Marcus considered her for a second noticing the white scars under her collar peaking out from the fabric. He remembered her body covered in them, and just like him they were marks she could never let go. “When does it end? You can’t sate this constant need to balance the scales.”

Sam stopped mid move and replaced her piece, leaned back in her seat, curling her feet beneath her while she pondered a response. “Marcus you cannot project your desire for balance on me. I know there is no balance, only now, only tomorrow. I put no faith in justice served by universal causality, and crime and punishment are never equal. The only thing that matters is that we are able to live free without the constant yoke of fear and control. I’ve been suffocated by those long enough,” she paused assessing the board before moving two pieces into what seemed to Marcus to be precarious positions. “But I suppose the real question is when does it end for you? Can you finally let go?”

“You’re trying to distract me,” Marcus alluded. 

“Whether I am or not is of no consequence. Answer the question.” Sam just smiled as the scenery around them became erratic, changing and forming, combining old memories with new ones. Sam even caught a glimpse of herself several times.

“I feel I still haven’t answered for my past either,” Marcus admitted while securing a key piece from Sam. 

“And now we’re back to scales,” Sam shook her head as she retreated her King to a defensible position. “You will never find peace if you don’t understand that no one life can be equalled by another because each life contains a universal amount of possibility. I could never hope to live long enough to balance the lives I’ve taken, so instead I focus on the ones that are here now.”

“What if it’s not enough?” Marcus seemed to be pleading with her to find an answer to a question that had always plagued him. What if everything he tried to do to make life better for his people had actually made it worse? What if every decision he’d made had been his own ego wanting to be right? What if he failed them?

“And who’s to judge that? We are the only ones who can make our own suffering, and you have been stewing in yours long enough. Look to the future, and stop dwelling on the past. Besides you’re about to lose this game.”

“The game isn’t over yet,” Marcus smirked. If there was one thing he’d learned about Sam it was that she had an aggressive type of gameplay, but if he couldn’t beat her in a straightforward fight, perhaps he could trap her. He shifted his King down to the bottom tier where his four defensive pieces were waiting then struck at two of her attacking rooks on the second tier knocking them clear from the board. “I still have a few traps in mind.”

Sam leaned forward resting her chin on the palm of her hand. She glanced at the board and back up at him, but as her shoulders started to shake he realized his mistake.

“You think this is funny,” Marcus frowned. 

Sam couldn’t help it as a raucous laugh burst out of her chest. She nearly kicked the board out of place as the world around them continued to spin. Marcus just watched, captured in both shock and awe at the childlike display before him. 

“I’m sorry Marcus,” Sam giggled. “I’m afraid your idea of a trap is far too two-dimensional.” She shifted her Queen back down to the base with one of her knights cornering his King, and with her final attack phase the top tier swapped places with the bottom isolating his King and leaving him frustrated in defeat.

“You couldn’t have predicted that stage change,” Marcus said as he reviewed the last twelve moves he’d made.

“You’re right, unless I knew they were coming.”

“You cheated?” Marcus scoffed. 

“No, but when preparing for war you need plans within plans.”

“How did you…” Marcus examined the board. “You were baiting me the whole time, forcing me to defend while moving your sacrifices into place for me to take.”

“Thereby leaving you vulnerable.”

“I shouldn’t have missed that,” Marcus moaned dragging his hand across his beard. 

“You didn’t,” Sam said as Marcus just glanced away at the concrete walls of Mount Weather that had formed around them. Sam shifted towards him pushing the board aside and allowing it to vanish into the periphery of the mindscape, as she rolled her chair forward so she slid her knees between his. “You need to trust your instincts more. While you were focused on the game I had a front row seat to your memories. They’re plagued with doubt, constant and repeating. You need to stop doubting yourself, while trusting in inevitabilities. Nothing is certain until it is.”

They were so close. He could taste the spice on her breath and the honeyed glow of her skin attempting to hide the energy writhing beneath it was so bright she almost seemed angelic. Sam’s hands were clasped together over her knees while his rested on his thighs. It would only take the slightest movement to touch, but both held firm. Almost in sync they pulled away as Sam stood to stretch her long limbs, shaking the intimacy of the moment off. 

“I guess we’re done then,” Marcus said as his mindscape darkened around them, tiny glints of stars erupting in the night sky. 

“Not this time.” Sam surprised him. 

“What?”

“I said I needed to trust you. I do, but I also needed to trust myself.” Sam’s fingers circled the middle finger of her right hand. She’d tested their connection without him knowing. The small incision across her thigh stung as she moved it, but it was necessary to determine whether he could still feel the effects himself. Marcus hadn’t even budged when she drew the blade across her thigh. The wound sealed quickly, but it was all she needed to know. The connection was fading, her emotions were her own again, and so were his, but that didn’t help the sensations that burdened her. 

“What do you mean?” Marcus asked. Sam just shook her head. 

“Another time,” she said while Marcus mindscape began to fade. “I’ll take over from here. This is going to be difficult, the timeframe just to cycle through could be damaging so I’ll need you to help ground me.”

“How do I do that?” Marcus said.

“A shock of any kind usually works.” Marcus nodded already anticipating the possible scenarios they could be lost in. 

“I’ll be in control, you’re just the passenger, but if you start to feel anything unusual you’ll need to let me know. My mindscape has a habit of protecting itself. It may reject you.”

“Good to know,” Marcus nodded. 

_806 Years Ago_

The mindscape seemed to fluctuate between stable and erratic as the imagery around them faded into and out of existence. Marcus felt his teeth vibrate as concussion soundwaves thrashed over them phasing anything solid into insubstantial piles of sludge. Sam hands were pressed tightly against her head, her eyes clenched shut, but it was the silent scream from her open mouth that terrified him. The veins across his arms and neck bulged beyond the norm and dark purple bruises snaked under his skin spreading from his wrists up his arms until he was almost completely covered. 

“Sam,” he screamed trying to reach her over the din. “You need to stop.” She couldn’t hear him, and when her legs collapsed Marcus caught her wrapping his arms tightly around her abdomen and shoulders. Marcus’s breathing was heavy, worry etching new lines into his face, as he examined her wild stare into the emptiness of her memories. 

“Sam, Sam look at me,” he shouted as he placed both hands beside her head attempting to force her gaze to him. He pulled back one hand feeling the sticky warmth of blood running between his fingers. Her ears were bleeding. Sam’s eyes rolled back, and her body began to convulse. Marcus held tightly as she thrashed in his arms. No that was wrong, he thought. He could barely remember his first aid training but he knew what he had to do. 

Marcus laid her down, tearing his black uniform jacket from him and placing it beneath her head he rolled her onto her side. Think, think, think, think, he panicked. When the seizure stopped he checked her pulse, nothing. He checked her breathing, nothing. He didn’t know what would happen if she died in the mindscape, didn’t even know if any of this could be counted as real or if the nanites would bring her back within that environment. Nothing made sense. He reacted on instinct, after all Sam and Nias kept telling him to trusts his instincts.

Marcus rolled her onto her back and started compressions, his palms cracking her ribs and sternum as he thrust down hard. He knew it wouldn’t matter in the long run, just needed to keep the blood circulating in her body. Compressions and then breaths he reminded himself as he lifted her chin, opened her mouth and surrounded it with his own, breathing for her, filling her lungs with air. He repeated the process again and again until he couldn’t tell how long he’d been at it. His wrists and arms hurt, his breathing was laboured and the sheen of sweat across his skin didn’t help to cool him at all. 

“Come on Sam,” he screamed at her. “You don’t get to quit, no, I won’t let you.” He raised his fist and slammed it down on her chest twice before giving her breaths again. “Fight, dammit.” When the strength finally left his arms he found himself bracing himself against her as he kept the pressure pushing down to her heart. “Please, I can’t lose you too.” His emotions raged against him sorrow and rage combined into a swirling fog of pain, and then he let go, sinking back onto the ground beside her, his fingers still gripping her arm.

It started slowly, just a warm tingling in his chest, but as it grew it surged down his arms. A power he’d felt before in the Coliseum, the energy he had in common with Sam. Marcus pushed himself onto his knees, wobbling and exhausted before laying one hand on her forehead and the other over her heart. 

“Please work,” he thought to himself as the flow within him fought its way under Sam’s skin. He watched the dull orange hue of the energy push its way into her arteries flowing along the same pathways, igniting and awakening until he felt the subtle flutter of a beat beneath his fingers. Sam’s chest expanded, crackling with her first gasp as the bones reshaped back to their original form. 

“Owe,” she whined. Marcus jumped back and nearly knocked himself on his ass. 

“Sam, can you hear me?”

“What did you do to me?” Sam wheezed as her lungs took their normal shape and the pain subsided slowly. 

“You stop breathing. I didn’t know that could happen here.”

“Anything can happen here,” she groaned as she shuffled up into a seated position. “Next time go easy on the ribs.”

“You plan on doing that again?” Marcus raised an eyebrow. “I’d rather be warned next time. I thought I was the one to do incredibly stupid things. What were you thinking? You should’ve told me this was that risky.”

“I’ve actually never tried it before,” Sam admitted. “But what do you know, it worked.” 

Marcus looked around for the first time since he’d first caught her, and she was right. The mindscape had settled into a sight he could hardly believe. They were standing on some sort of freighter in the middle of a widespread ocean he couldn’t see the end of. The grey waves around them mauled the ship, tossing it from port to starboard tipping the rails into the water and throwing any loose cargo overboard. The waves cresting on the horizon looked like they were miles high and approaching with a speed capable of not only capsizing them but drowning them outright.

“Do your memories always try and kill you?” Marcus joked as he helped pull her to her feet. 

“Only the ones that signal the end of the world,” she said as she pointed up towards the sky. There, in the centre of a tumultuous storm of clouds was the sun, only it flashed and dimmed in random intervals. Streams of superheated hydrogen blazed across the darkening sky as an unknown force pulled it apart. “This was the death of my world. When the Demon’s Gate swallowed our sun and four other worlds whole before finally ripping ours apart.”

“Demon’s Gate?” He asked.

“It was our unofficial nickname for the black hole,” she explained. “At least that’s what my Grandfather called it. I suppose when you’re explaining spatial anomalies to a five-year-old, nicknames help.” 

Marcus watched at the awesome power of the black hole swallowing an entire sun, and its death throes blasting flares of concentrated plasma into the surrounding space. Nothing could survive the destructive power he was witnessing. Sam tapped his shoulder gently and tilted her chin toward the stern of the ship where a group of people were being loaded onto a vessel even larger than the freighter, hovering above the ocean waves, and blasting the water with powerful turbine engines away from the ship. 

When Marcus saw her, he couldn’t believe it. A small child, black hair pulled back and tied, a small ferret-like creature cradled in her hands, as a stern looking older man shuffled her into the aircraft. 

“That’s you,” Marcus said his eyes wide at the stark difference between the child in front and the woman at his side. The eons of time had ravaged the innocence from her eyes, but it was her. 

“That’s me,” she said as she brushed a small stream of blood from her nose. Marcus lifted her chin to check the bleed, but she brushed his hand away. 

“We can stop.”

“No, I need you to know. I want you to know.” Sam slid down the bow of the ship, her feet barely finding purchase on anything solid until she reached the stern. “Come on, I can’t have my memories jump too often or I’ll end up with another seizure, so we do this the long way. Follow me.”

Marcus stumbled across the warping deck until he reached the aircraft and climbed in after her. Young Sam was curled up in her Grandfather’s lap whispering melodic tunes to her pet as the ship lifted off from its moorings connecting it to the freighter, and not a moment too soon as a towering tsunami devoured the freighter sinking it to the bottom of the ocean. 

“I have to ask,” Marcus started nervously wringing his hands. “Can we die here?”

“Only if I get lost.”

“That’s not overly comforting,” Marcus said as he sunk into a hard seat the metal buckles and straps poking into his back. 

“That’s why I’ll need you, to pull me back if necessary.” Marcus met her worried stare and simply dipped his head to agree. 

Marcus looked about the cramped vessel, hundreds of people rammed in, shuffling from brace to brace attempting not to fall over, searching for their loved ones. His eyes rested on Sam and her guardian, the older gentlemen with hard edges to his face and body clutching his Granddaughter to him as if afraid to let her go. 

“So that’s your Grandfather?” Marcus asked. 

Sam acknowledged the query with a small smile. “Yes, that’s my Grandfather, better known to me as Admiral Caryx Aeges.”

“What?” Marcus couldn’t hide the shock in his voice as it raised loud enough for anyone to hear if they had been able to hear them in the first place.

“I told you Marcus, my story is an interesting one, and this is only the beginning.”

_Caryx (Origin Planet below Alpha Site) – T – 2 Days_

Abby’s mind racked the numerous possibilities that would hinder their escape as she paced back and forth between the four remaining active pods in the stasis chamber. It had become her harbour away from the others. A place she could think without needing to justify the responses her face could no longer hide. She doubted their plan, and worse doubted their ability to free the last five people locked in their pods, including her daughter. 

Clarke’s body was safe, where her mind was Abby didn’t know but they had to find a way to locate it within the core network before they could escape. The other four pods were a mystery. Their datapads removed but their vitals stable and strong. Abby scoured over their sensor data trying to find any clues to determine who the last four survivors were. She couldn’t even determine if they were male or female, and all the while she hoped that one person was within them, only one. 

“It doesn’t take a genius to figure out you’re waiting for someone,” Jake’s voice reverberated off the stone of the enclosed space. Abby jumped, her hand flying to her chest as he startled her from her thoughts. “The others can’t give me an accurate timeframe, but maybe you can. How long has it been?”

“Since the Ark?” Abby asked. Jake’s head tilted slightly. “Seven years and a couple centuries maybe. I’m not entirely sure myself.” Jake ran his hand over the cold glass of the top of the pod as he rounded closer to Abby. She turned to meet him as he wrapped his arms around her back pulling her in to his chest. Abby pressed her faced into his shirt, smelling the cool tang that she’d spent years with, remembering the good times and the bad all at once, but trying to keep from breaking apart. It wasn’t the first time since Jake walked out of the stasis chamber she’d felt guilty about loving Marcus, but Jake was her past, sure he was held to her right now, as real as the day she’d married him, but how could she let him in again when she still had hope Marcus was alive. She felt the ache in her chest before her throat clamped down and the soft sobs she was burying into his shirt broke free. 

“Hey,” Jake soothed as his hands ran up and down her back. “Hey it’s okay.” Abby leaned back, tilting her chin up and meeting his warm azure eyes. 

“I lost you Jake, and it was all my fault.” Salty tears, coursed down her wet cheeks. Jakes thumb swept across her face wiping the tears away as they fell. He drew her back in close holding her as tightly as he could. 

“Don’t do that,” he whispered. “I made my own choices. I never blamed you. All I ever wanted was a future for you and Clarke.” 

“It wasn’t an easy one,” she admitted. “I didn’t think the pain would ever go away, but it did, and she never forgot about you.”

Jake buried his nose in her hair, breathing in deeply before pulling back. “But you did,” he said softly. “It’s alright. I’m glad you were able to find happiness again. So, who are you hoping is in there?” 

Abby’s eyes fell to the four pods. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Do I know this man?” Jake asked his eyes pleading. “You know what never mind.”

“I’m sorry,” she cried. 

“No Abby don’t be sorry,” he said as he held her shoulders tightly so that she couldn’t turn away. “It’s just, I’m standing here with the woman I love, and it was only a moment ago for me, but it’s been years for you. I don’t know how to deal with that yet, but I’m still here for you, and I still love you.”

Abby brushed the tears from her eyes and let a gentle smile crest her lips. “I’ll always love you Jake.” She hugged him close as she realized what she had just done. Even without knowing if he was alive or not, she’d chosen Marcus. It broke her heart to have Jake here and not feel towards him as she once had. It felt as if the hole that had been forming in her chest the past few days was just going to open and swallow her hole, until she thought about Marcus. He’d always filled the gaps in her, as she had him. She would believe he was in one of those pods, she had to, she couldn’t lose him, not again.

A loud explosion shook the stasis chamber, a large crack forming in the stone walls around them. Abby and Jake ran into the main lab into a dust cloud of glass fragments and noxious fumes. An entire section of the lab had been blown in, the roof collapsing down on top of the refrigeration units burying half the lab in a mountain of rubble. Jackson was lying prone half-on and off the desk with a fresh laceration across his forehead. Abby ran to him immediately checking his pulse, finding one and pulling him onto the ground while keeping pressure on his wound to stem the bleeding. 

“Grab me that med kit now,” she yelled at Jake as he went running across the room to the far wall where he yanked the grey container free from the wall. Once she had it she went to work, sealing his wound, using the datapad to scan his abdomen and chest for any internal injuries. Jackson was unconscious, had some surface wounds she managed to seal quite easily, but it was the significant rise at the back of his skull that was worrying her. The skin was intact but she could feel the vessels underneath pumping blood into the swelling space. If something wasn’t done soon the pressure on his brain would kill him. 

“What the hell happened?” Diyoza yelled as she and Octavia ran into the lab tripping over large chunks of concrete and metal that had exploded in from the wall by the refrigeration unit. 

“No idea, where are the others?” Abby choked out, the dust coating her throat. 

“They weren’t with us,” Octavia said. 

“Here,” a gravelly voice called from under the debris. “We’re here.” Diyoza and Octavia reacted quickly leaping over fallen lab equipment until they reached the blast zone. The metric ton of concrete was piled precariously on top of itself where one wrong shift would crush whoever was underneath. 

“Together,” Diyoza said as Octavia’s fingers wrapped around the underside of a massive block of concrete. The slab wouldn’t budge.

Across the lab Abby was frantically trying to find something to stop Jackson’s brain swelling, while Jake searched the dormitory for the others. 

“Jake,” Abby yelled. “Help them.” She directed him to Octavia and Diyoza slowly struggling to move a metal beam aside. 

Armed soldiers poured in from the upper balcony of the lab, Tanis leading them down into the lower level. They spread out along the walls, gun barrels pointing into every crease and doorway clearing the room of any potential insurgency. They cleared the room, dragging Thelonius and Sinclair in from a nearly buried tech lab off the exterior of the lab. 

Tanis charged straight for Abby, any notion of his conceit gone as a scowl folded his features inward leaving his facial features as nothing but angles and points. All illusion to his superiority had fled the second he wrapped his fingers around her throat and lifted her off the ground, her feet dangling below her. 

“What have you done?” He spat. 

“No!” Jake roared as he tackled two guards attempting to get to her. The guards rolled away from the attack and had Jake pinned to the ground in an instant, blood leaking from above his eye and his lip where they’d struck him. 

Abby’s vision started to cloud over as the blood to her brain slowed. She struggled against Tanis’s grip unable to break his fingers free. Her legs kicked out at him, striking his abdomen and chest, but to no avail. She fought with everything she had left. Tanis’s other hand gripped the side of her head, his fingers relaxed slightly as he lowered her and her toes touched the ground. She saw her chance. Abby turned her head and bit down hard, through skin, muscle, and bone, latching on to the space between Tanis’s thumb and forefinger. He dropped her.

Abby collapsed in a pile on the floor, spitting blood and flesh from her mouth, coughing and trying to take a deep breath while the pain around her throat intensified. Tanis moved to kick her. Abby braced for the impact; her arms wrapped around her face but nothing came. 

The cacophony of the last few minutes vanished, replaced by an eerie hum that seemed to vibrate from within her. When she dropped her arms from her face she saw Cyrus standing amidst a swarm of soldiers at the base of the stairwell dressed entirely in formal white gold embellished uniforms. Abby shook her head as the increasing pressure within the space caused her ears to pop. 

“That’s enough Tanis,” Cyrus commanded with an otherworldly voice that reached into the very heart of all present choking off any possibility of reprisal. She couldn’t move, whether in terror or just plain shock she couldn’t tell. Tanis was a twitching, foaming, writhing mess on the floor by Cyrus’s feet, but that didn’t distract Abby from the drastic physical changes Cyrus was emitting. His eyes had transformed to a deep vibrant green from the dull grey she was used to seeing, his hair inked from black to a flaming red, and a wave of force seemed to emit from his centre forcing all others around down. 

One of his guard tapped his soldier and whispered something into his ear. Cyrus appeared to visibly diminish within seconds breathing deeply and withdrawing whatever effect he had expended. Tanis’s twitching ceased, and he crawled to his feet, wiping the snot and saliva from his mouth.

“What did I say?” Cyrus said now appearing to tower over Tanis as if he was a child. 

“Yes sir.” It was complete an utter obedience. An authoritarian grip over his soldiers that Abby had never witnessed. There was no hint of possible retaliation present in Tanis’s behaviour, just complete and total submission. It was in that instant Abby realized there was no way they could escape because of the complete and total devotion Cyrus’s soldiers gave him. They would hunt them to the ends of the world if only to not bring ire from Cyrus. Whatever power he possessed was enough to both terrorize and inspire, a dichotomy of beliefs that would otherwise be extinguished in anyone else, but somehow, he’d secured it. 

“A little help here,” Raven’s voice could be heard muffled through the piles of rock and metal. It woke Abby from her daze, as Jackson lay beside her, his one pupil blown wide. 

“Please,” Abby begged. “I need help.”

“Get him in a pod,” Cyrus ordered as soldiers seized Jackson from the floor. “Secure the others in the dormitory, and start the treatment, now.” Soldiers along the walls surrounded the rubble and systematically lifted sections a bit at a time until they found Roan’s back holding up a large slab of rock and keeping it from crushing down on him and Raven curled beneath him. His left hand had been crushed beneath a beam, his fingers jutting out of place as the bones attempted to snap back into place. Roan bit back the agony as they dragged him out of the hole with Raven right behind him. They glanced at each other briefly before being shuffled off to the dormitory.

Masked soldiers swarmed the group holding each down in turn as they injected them three different vials.

“Wait stop,” Abby yelled. “What are you doing?”

Cyrus glided across the floor, side-stepping the destroyed lab without even looking down, until he stood toe-to-toe with Abby. She wouldn’t balk. Her stare was fierce and constant, his equally so. He stretched out his hand and a soldier placed a syringe into his palm while holding a case with the three vials securely nestled in soft foam. 

“Your turn,” he hushed. 

“No!” Abby backed away until she found her legs wouldn’t budge. They’d seized completely. She couldn’t feel them. Abby slammed her fist against her thigh but felt nothing. “What have you done to us?”

“You should be more concerned with what I’m going to do with you Ms. Griffin.” Three injections in sequence, blue, yellow, and then clear. The first two felt cold under her skin when he pressed the needle into her neck, but when the third combined with them it burned. Abby could feel every pulse of her heart pressuring the fluid through her veins searing the inside of her body until it had saturated every tissue. “Put her with the others, and clean up this mess. I want to know what that explosion was from.”

“Yes sir,” Tanis bowed. 

The sheets felt cold against her skin as the injections raged within her body. Abby went through the symptoms to distract herself from the internal fire that was scraping her insides raw. They all were suffering a fever, sweating, a couple were seizing up unable to move, while others started vomiting over the edges of their cots. She couldn’t determine what was in the vials, but she was damn sure Cyrus had something in mind for them. 

Raven had rolled off her bed and was shaking so hard her head looked like it would hit the wall behind her. Abby rolled off the bed, hitting the ground hard. Her legs wouldn’t work but she crawled grabbing onto whatever she could to get to Raven. 

“I’m here Raven, hang on,” she choked out as her stomach turned threatening to purge next. Abby pulled the blanket off the bed and wrapped it around her tightly trying to pull her away from the wall. 

“Abby,” Raven moaned. 

“Hold on, I’ll get something,” Abby mumbled as she turned to find armed guards at the door. They were prisoners, complete and true to the term, with no room for interpretation. She wasn’t going anywhere. Abby covered her mouth with her sleeve as her chest erupted with a vicious cough. When she dropped her hand to check Raven’s fever her arm was speckled with blood. 

Raven fumbled with the blanket until it fell from her shoulders. She grabbed Abby’s wrist and placed a small device in her palm. 

“They’re all finished,” she wheezed as it became more difficult for her to breathe. Abby looked down and found a breathing apparatus tucked in her hand. “We’re ready.”

“Crazy girl,” Abby sighed as she collapsed on the floor beside Raven, tugging her closer and trying to keep them warm as her body temperature dropped. She fought against the lull of sleep her drooping eyelids begged to enter, all the while watching the door and just as both eyes surrendered to the inevitability of unconscious bliss she caught a glimpse of a masked red-headed guard knocking out the other two. Now what, was all she could think before sleep claimed her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Love any feedback, comments, queries you may have.


	14. Evolution

_Alpha Site: T – 2 Days (806 Years Ago - Mindscape)_

The cargo hold stank of refuse and expelled stomach acid. Hundreds of people crammed in together, leaning against the cold outer hull of the vessel while it pushed through the collapsing atmosphere of the planet, and hundreds more in cargo ships just like their own attempting to escape the gravity pull of the black hole. The sickening weight of stale sweat suffocated the air as Marcus found it difficult to take a normal breath without gagging. 

He searched the hold and found the familiar black hair on the child curled up inside her Grandfather’s long grey military coat. They both seemed unaffected by the whole experience, although after careful observation it was obvious the child was sleeping while her Grandfather held tight to her. 

A stout woman pitched forward and emptied the contents of her stomach onto Marcus’s boots. The foul stench filled his nose as he closed his palm over his mouth. Sam’s fingers wrapped around his wrist and pulled him closer to her.

“We’re seeing the past, not living it,” she whispered. “Block out the sensations and focus on the superficial. It’ll help.” Marcus zeroed in on the slightest imperfection in the metal framing of the floor and didn’t let the image falter from his mind until his other senses had habituated to their surroundings. “See that wasn’t so hard,” Sam smirked.  
Sam swayed with the vessel as it rolled through the gravity waves pushing and pulling the ship in dangerous maneuvers. She tried to keep her focus sharp and her mind clear, her head turned sideways away from Marcus so he wouldn’t notice the blood dripping down her neck from her ear. No need to worry him, yet, she thought as she wiped it away with her soaked sleeve. 

“So, where are we?” Marcus asked over the echoing din of the hold.

“Our original home,” she explained. “A small binary star system with six additional planets, four of which were inhabited by our people before one star collapsed creating the black hole. It devoured the other star and planets before ripping our world to shreds.” She waved her hand around at the people clustered together, holding each other so tightly there was scarcely room to breathe. “This was the mass evacuation Caryx ordered prior to the stars collapse. He saved our race while the rest of our leaders were content to sit and wait.”

The walls around them began to fade revealing the endless space around the ship and the black hole above them. Sam pointed to a blazing white stream of energy that seemed to erupt from the centre of the singularity. 

“That is a gravity stream,” she smiled, her eyes fixed to the iridescent bridge as if mesmerized. “Caryx determined well before the star collapsed that it was failing and anticipated, calculated, and planned for an escape that would save our people, unfortunately the government in power reacted too slowly and ended up needlessly sacrificing two of the colony worlds before the evacuation was even begun.”

Marcus watched in awe as the ship flew above the gravity stream, surfing it into the interior of the singularity. It shouldn’t have been possible. The gravitational forces should have ripped the ship apart by shear pressure. 

“This isn’t possible,” Marcus said wide-eyed.

“You’re right,” she agreed. “I never figured out how Caryx found it, or even how it was formed, but it’s there, a bridge existing in the centre of a mass singularity that destroys everything else around it. Our ships navigated along that stream until it emptied us above a new planet in a new solar system.”

“A wormhole. They’re purely theory, science fiction at it’s best.”

“Only because it’s near impossible to prove,” she said as the ship around them began to disintegrate leaving them floating in the cold of space above the planet Marcus had become accustom to seeing outside Alpha Site’s windows. “But that’s what you floated out of, the same passage from another galaxy. You weren’t the first we found, but you were the first we found that survived the trip.”

“This is incredible,” Marcus spun in circles, his feet flailing below him, while his vision sought purchase on everything around them. The emptiness of the singularity before him, the planet below, and the cresting suns on the opposite side of the planet. 

“Hold on,” Sam groaned as her head throbbed. “This could be a little jarring. Remember what I said before. If I drift you need to pull me back.” Marcus nodded as the blanket of space blinked out of existence leaving nothing but a clouded starless sky above them and a cobbled ground beneath his feet. 

It was early morning, steam evaporated off the stone streets as fresh morning dew baked in the three suns that peeked over the snowy mountains to the east. The multicoloured light that filtered through the clouds and bounced off the building glass reflected a prismatic show on their skin. Trisol, he learned it was called, for the three suns that gave light to the planet. A yellow dwarf star still young and in the early millennia of its lifespan, a red giant that blocked out the other stars during the later part of the day, and a blue star that was nearing the end of its life.

Sam dragged Marcus out of the street towards an arched stone bridge that hung low over a shallow shimmering river. He watched in awe as the city came to life around them, playing out in triple speed the time that would normally elapse. Marcus kept a careful eye on Sam to ensure she wasn’t overdoing it, but it was difficult with the distraction of the new world around him, and her pretending that it didn’t affect her.

People flooded the streets in waves upon waves of blurry multi-toned figures. The conversations were mumbled, and hovered above the stone road like background static. Marcus recognized the building structures as the very vessels that the population had been evacuated on, repurposed into a new city that had grown to impossible heights in a short period of time. 

“It’s incredible,” he breathed, his voice dying on the warm wind that swept in from the mountains. Sealed tube-like structures carrying hundreds of people soared overheard secured to the ground by towering lattices of metal, stone, and some sort of black crystal deposit. It was the first time he’d ever seen a train, or what may have been something similar, that wasn’t displayed on a view screen on the Ark. 

“It really was,” Sam said as her eyes lingered on a five-storey building in the distance sitting at the edge of a busy marketplace below what Marcus recognized as the capital building. A single insignia shone in bright green and gold above the double door entrance to the building – a leafy tree surrounded by a gold ring – the medic’s symbol. “That’s where we’re going.” 

Time seemed to slow to a normal speed as they made their way through the noisy winding market towards the hospital. The hospital rose above the market as they got closer, bordered by a staircase that could dwarf the very city around it. People sat on the stairs, milling about, selling odds and ends from their various collections. The floral scent of fresh cut fruit and baked pastry filled his nose sending his mind reeling into a memory engulfed tidal wave of emotions. He couldn’t remember if he’d ever experienced these scents before, but the connection to his memories was so overpowering the images started to flash before his eyes. 

Marcus couldn’t avoid being pulled in as the Ark began to border his thoughts and the brief happy memories he had with his parents before his father’s passing. The image of a young floppy haired Marcus bounded across the street jumping into his mother’s arms as she spun him around in their miniscule quarters. Vera plopped him on the bed as she busied about pulling containers out from a small bag she’d smuggled in from farm station. His bunk had always been rock hard and the steel bit into his legs as he outgrew the small frame, but Marcus was always fond of his early days, at least before the accident. 

The image of his Mother ghosted over the scene of the market on Trisol like a photo superimposed on top of another, but he couldn’t pull his eyes away. Sam shook him fervently but to no avail, he was slipping. Vera unlocked the lids of the three containers and pulled out fruit Marcus had never seen before, strawberries, an apple, and an orange. The colours were mesmerizing as she slowly began to cut them into slices. 

“Happy Birthday Marcus!” He heard her whisper as she brushed back the hair from his eyes. The sensation of his mother’s fingers gently brushing across his forehead startled him as the sensation sent electric sparks through his skin. When his eyes re-focused Sam was holding his wrist tightly, a dull electric current flowing from her into him, shaking him from his memories. 

“What was that?” She asked, concern pitching her voice lower. 

“I’m not sure, I lost control,” he tried to understand. Sam shook her head and released her grip. 

“Good memories are easier to get lost in,” she explained. “Anyway, we’re here.”

Marcus looked up the broad marbled staircase to the hospital above them, it’s structure shading the upper half of the stairs and the people gathering there from the three suns now at their peak in the sky. 

“What are we looking at?” He asked. 

“There,” she pointed in the opposite direction at the soldier exiting the capital building in full white and gold dress uniform, the trappings of his rank and time served emblazoned on his right arm, covering it entirely. He marched towards the hospital, a bouquet of yellow flowers tucked carefully underneath his arm. Marcus vision zoomed in on the man who despite being decades older resembled the same man cradling his granddaughter on the day their world was destroyed. 

Marcus’s eyes followed Caryx as he climbed the stairs, but abruptly stopped as a black-haired woman in white with the same crest on her arm as the insignia above the door, bolted out of the front doors and nearly tumbled head first down the stairs as she crashed against him wrapping her arms tightly around his back. 

“How much time has passed?” Marcus asked, quickly deducing the woman was Sam. 

“Thirty years give or take,” she nodded. “I had just graduated from my medics exam, and been accepted into a highly competitive and highly dangerous research position. This was to be the start of my life. It ended up being it’s end.” 

Marcus didn’t ask. He didn’t have to as she moved towards her former self him following in her wake. It always startled him the glimpses of his own past, but seeing the woman before him represented as an earlier version of the woman he knew was astonishing. They were nothing alike, and yet there was an infinitesimal trace of the spirit that used to be there. The younger Sam clung tightly to her Grandfather, smiling and laughing as he congratulated her on her accomplishment, while the present Sam leaned back, arms crossed against a nearby column half-listening to the conversation as Marcus circled the scene as if examining a holographic video playing out.

“I really wish you would re-consider the posting I found you,” Caryx said. “You would be fully funded, have the best resources, and be safe.”

“Thank you, sir,” she practically bowed to him as she said it. “But you know I don’t want to participate in military research, besides if the team is successful, we’ll be setting a new standard for knowledge acquisition and application.”

“I just wish you weren’t going into the interior,” Caryx said as he presented her with the flowers. 

“The interior?” Marcus whispered as he leaned closer to Sam.

“The majority of our people accept technology as the way to progress our race,” Sam explained. “But about four percent of the population rejected that belief and moved to a location on Caryx that was isolated. They prefer to live a life in complete contradiction to everything that we are, and it cost them for a long time. I was leaving with a team of a dozen medics to research natural medicines within the interior and try and help them. They were dying, diseased, and refused nanotechnology.”

Marcus nodded as she explained while listening to the heated conversation that was beginning to get louder on the steps below them. 

“No!” Young Sam shouted. “And that’s final, sir.” She emphasized the last word as if it was a curse, leaving her tone dripping with a sense of disdain for his overbearing protectiveness.

Sam was tall, but Caryx could still look down on her and it took everything in him to allow his stubborn Granddaughter her own wishes and dreams. “Fine,” he sighed. “At least tell me you’re leaving him behind.”

Young Sam giggled, and Marcus’s jaw hit the ground. The sound was childlike and innocent, and not anything he’d ever heard from her counterpart. Sam just gave the most subtle side glare as she stepped away from the column and began to follow herself and Caryx down the stairs. 

“About that sir,” she started but the quick shift of her hand from the inside of her pocket caught the rays of the suns and reflected the light in a prism across her grandfather’s white uniform. Caryx was fast and had already seized her hand and had it raised in the air. Circling the middle finger of her right hand was a crystal ring that sparkled under the refracted light. 

“Not him, it couldn’t be,” he said both in disbelief and mild annoyance. 

“I know you thought he wouldn’t be around very long, but we’re bonded now, and in more ways than one.” Young Sam placed her other hand a top Caryx’s and sent the image into his mind of Cyrus slipping a silver stone ring onto her finger and it transforming into the crystal that it now remained. 

_“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” Sam whispered as her fingers laced behind his neck._

_“This is one promise I will never break,” Cyrus assured._

The thought was brief and Caryx breathed and shook his head as he released her hands. He turned to leave but before he could Cyrus ran up the stairs taking them two at a time until he reached them. It was the Cyrus Marcus had seen on the briefings the Paladins had every day, but it definitely wasn’t. His hair shone bright auburn under the suns and his vibrant green eyes resembled the Eden tree Marcus had grown up caring for. At what point did the man before him become the monster every one was trying to kill?

“So, have you told him the good news?” Cyrus said, his smile beaming at them. He looked like he was going to burst out of his skin, the anticipation making him rock forward and back, swinging his arms as if ready to throw something. Young Sam smacked Cyrus hard in the stomach. “Oops,” Cyrus grinned. 

Caryx’s eyes shrunk to mere slits as he examined Sam. “Just tell me,” he groaned as he suspected what she was about to say.

“I love you,” she gushed before wrapping him in a tight embrace and whispering “You’re going to be an amazing Great Grandfather too.” Caryx held her as tightly as the day he became her guardian. When the news of the colony worlds destruction reached home, Sam didn’t understand that her parents wouldn’t be coming back. He held her that night so tightly he was afraid he might suffocate her, and swore that he would protect her forever. 

“How long? Cayrx asked. 

“About five weeks,” she smiled. “I wanted to know for sure before leaving for the interior. Make sure the baby was healthy and my nanites were in full protect mode just in case.”

“This doesn’t make me feel any better about you going,” Caryx sighed. 

“You can’t protect me forever,” she said as she squeezed him tighter, her hands leaving imprints in his uniform. 

“I can try,” he huffed. 

Cyrus slid closer. “Or you can hand the task to me, sir.” He wasn’t a soldier although he worked for the military researching bio-engineering and viral pathogens. 

Caryx ignored him. “Can you leave me with my Granddaughter for a moment, boy?” Cyrus flinched and slunk back retreating down the stairs halfway. 

Marcus leaned closer and whispered “Clearly wasn’t a fan of that union.”

“You don’t say. How could you tell?” Sam smirked her tone laced with sarcasm. “We need to move lower on the stairs, now.”

“Why?” Marcus asked.

“Just do it.” She was curt and said nothing more as she left him wondering. He followed but kept his ear trained on the conversation between Young Sam and Caryx. 

“I don’t know how you stand him,” Caryx glared as Cyrus retreated further down the stairs, aware of the burning eyes boring into his skull. 

“You can’t really complain,” Young Sam laughed. “You introduced us.”

“To my ultimate regret.”

“Really?” She said the slightest hint of tears glistening in the corner of her eyes.

Caryx stopped and released the breath he’d been holding. “No not really. I know he’s a good man, smart, capable, but is he worthy of you?”

“If that’s the criteria I’d never be with anyone, besides, the bonding worked. You can’t say it wasn’t destined.”

“You know I don’t believe in that,” he said. “Our people sharing souls is a fallacy encouraged by the interior.”

“Maybe, but I’m happy,” she assures him. “We’re going to be a family. How can that be wrong?” Caryx just shook his head but smiled. “Besides, if it’s a boy, Caryx is a good name.”

“Oh please no,” Caryx’s laugh boomed across the courtyard. 

Marcus and Sam looked up at the happy sight, but before he could say another word, Sam pushed him back behind a cart and yelled “Cover your ears, close your eyes, hold your breath.” Marcus knew better then to ask now, so he did as commanded. 

Marcus felt the shockwave through the ground as the vibrations shook the cobbles free. Sam had pulled him down and pulled the cart back on top of them just as the explosion hit scattering the market, sending chunks of stone hurling through the air and crushing civilians beneath the debris. 

The initial blast rocked the city followed by several more that when seen from above speckled the surface of the planet with cavernous pock-marked craters. Marcus ran from behind their shelter and immediately started pulling the rubble off survivors he could hear buried underneath. Sam just stood watching.

“Help me,” Marcus yelled as his ears rang from the explosion. Sam approached slowly as Marcus found a child buried beneath a section of marble stairs that had broken free and trapped them within the crevice. 

“Marcus stop,” Sam shouted as she seized his shoulder and spun him around. “These people died centuries ago. You can’t save them.” He’d forgotten with all the chaos and havoc that this only existed within her mind, as real as it was, it was only a memory. But it wasn’t to him. The sounds were real, the smells of ash and soot pervading his nostrils as he coughed to clear his throat, the rumbling of the aftershocks shifting the tectonic plates closest to the crust of the planet sending towering infernos twisting into the air above the city. 

When he finally stopped searching the ground his eyes landed on Caryx and Young Sam, blown back against the pillars at the top of the stairs. Caryx lay twisted and broken in a pile of his own broken bones, his skin half charred, and his face a misshapen mess of the man he once was. The contrast of his once white uniform now stained black with ash and copper with blood, paralleled the destruction around the city. Young Sam lay back against the nearest pillar, her knees pull to her chest in fetal position on the ground, her hand cradling her abdomen where a metal bar had pierced through her and embedded itself in the pillar behind.

Marcus could hear the piercing scream of someone from behind him as Cyrus ran, stumbling over bodies as he struggled to get to Sam. Marcus watched as the lifeblood inside her spilled onto the dusty ground beneath painting the marble stones crimson. 

Sam had somehow managed to sneak up behind him in all the chaos. Her hand rested on his shoulder as she whispered “We have to go.” 

“Who did this?” He said through gritted teeth.

“This one event sparked a civil war between the interior and us. A small fanatical splinter group that wanted to unseat any semblance of power tried to eradicate every member of the leadership. They nearly succeeded, and it may have been better if they had. It doesn’t matter now, there’s more to see.” The image before his eyes began to blur as if dissolving paint on a canvas, replaced by a sterile grey hospital room where Young Sam lay strapped in to a bed and pierced by any number of wires and needles. 

“You survived,” he said. “Caryx didn’t.”

Sam simply nodded, explaining that his death transformed him into a martyr and the planet was renamed soon after. Cyrus entered the room, fresh bruises covering his face as he slipped into an uncomfortable chair by her bedside, gingerly sliding his fingers under hers. He brushed his fingers around the patches of burned skin trying with some success not to wake her, as she began to stir. Young Sam opened one eye as the other had been sealed shut to heal. The tears that began to flow down to wet the pillow under her came like a floodgate. She tried to speak, but for the scarring in her throat, only murmurs came out. 

“Hey, hey, it’s alright,” Cyrus whispered as he pressed his lips to her forehead, one of the few places that wasn’t burned or bruised. “I’m going to fix this. I promise.” The image froze around them, like hitting pause on a film. Sam moved around the bed and knelt down to look directly into Cyrus’s eyes. 

“I should’ve seen it then,” she said. 

“What?”

“I lost the child in the attack,” she said as she ghosted her hand over Young Sam’s injuries as if the sensation would remind her of their impact. “And the scarring from the heat of the bar that struck me left me unable to have any more, but if I had seen in Cyrus’s eyes then, what I can see now I wouldn’t have let him proceed.”

“Then you were unable to have children before the virus,” Marcus realized as they backed towards the exit watching Cyrus repeat over and over “I’ll fix this.”

Sam only nodded; her breathing hitched as the moment of her nightmares played out in front of her. Marcus watched with both fascination and pain as the waves of emotion seemed to wash over Sam in ebb and flows, coming and going as violently as the hurricane seas he’d grown up watching on the Ark. Her face contorted into a stressed grimace as she attempted to reel in the overwhelming sensations that were tearing her apart. Her hand clutched at her chest while fresh blood dripped from her ears and nose.

“Sam stop,” Marcus said as both hands found her shoulders and turned her away from the scene. Her eyes glazed over, a white film slipping from one side to the next sealing her vision into the scene and trapping her within it. He caught her as her knees buckled and her breathing quickened, rasping out incommunicable sobs. “Sam come on, come back to me.”

Marcus cradled her head, leaning in feeling the fever radiating from her skin. His forehead rested against her own as he whispered into one ear. “Come back to me.” Sam’s breathing was erratic but steady, the vessels in her neck pulsed with fervor a drumbeat he could track against his fingers that held firm to her head. Her arms rested limp at her sides as if there was no strength left in her body to hold them up. It took a few minutes, but he felt the beat slow under his fingertips and then her eyes slowly faded back to their original icy blue. 

They were so close she could feel the warm breath of him across her cheeks. When her gaze refocused, she dragged one hand up her side to meet his fingers, entangling them with his own. “I’m okay,” she breathed. “This was where it all started. Here, right here, in that infernal hospital bed.” Her swollen throat choked out the words as if being pulled from her rather than given willingly. 

“What do you mean?” Marcus asked as he thoroughly examined the bleeding from her ears. It had slowed, but hadn’t stopped. “Sam we need to stop. It’s killing you.”

“It won’t happen again,” she assured as she wiped the blood away and let him help her to her feet. Once standing she gently pushed herself back as if the that could help the way her skin burned where he touched her. Watching her past play out was confusing enough, but having Marcus beside her didn’t help matters. She shook the thought that all this was a mistake aside and fixated on the task at hand. “This was where I had the chance to stop him, where his single-minded purpose was born. Instead, I encouraged it, blinded by my own pride, and fascinated by the discoveries we made.”

“You can’t blame yourself for his actions,” Marcus said as he closed the gap between them allowing his shoulder to gently rest against her own. 

“I’m not,” she said as the room swirled into the labyrinth of her mind to be replaced with a spacious laboratory complete with wall upon wall of vegetation, animals in sealed glass cells, and humanoid test subjects, that looked far closer to death than Marcus was comfortable with, strapped to metal tables around the lab. Each test subject was contained within a hermetically sealed cylinder and resembled a pin cushion with hundreds of finger sized needles penetrating the skin connected to glass pipettes systematically injecting strange coloured fluids into the subjects. In the centre of the lab stood Cyrus and Sam surrounded by seven others all methodically testing and re-testing an unknown compound and solution in both gene-sequencers and the test subjects directly. “I told you. I’m as much to blame for what happened as he was, as we all were.”

“You did experiments on your own people.”

“If it makes you feel any better, they were terminal patients who volunteered from the interior.” Marcus cringed as he watched the scientists bust themselves around the lab, manually distilling compounds from the plants surrounding them in abundance while concurrently withdrawing blood, skin, and bone samples from the animals that were significantly sedated within their cells. The scene played out in rapid speed as if Sam was fast-forwarding her memories. “Now, this was the moment.”

Marcus watched as Cyrus grim visage suddenly transformed into a manic glee taking Sam’s hand and spinning her around between the bodies of the test subjects. It was morbid and he couldn’t grasp the progression of the different versions of Sam he was learning about.

“This day was when we managed to sequence a viral strain that could bond to an infertile zygote and repair it, at least before it mutated and wiped out ninety-five percent of the population and sterilized the rest.

“You told me you were involved,” Marcus said as he backed away from her. “But I never imagined this. You engineered the virus.”

“Yes,” she said as she wiped a single tear from her eye before it threatened to fall. “This single lynchpin event was responsible for everything that followed. The eugenics programs, cloning, and an endless cycle of war.”

Marcus didn’t know what to say. His mind was a tempest of impossible emotions. He knew in his heart he would never have subjected his own people to the sort of trials and tests that Sam had done, but he also knew the moments unfolding within her memories were centuries old and since had become irrelevant to the age they seemed to be in now. He’d learned enough to know that the virus didn’t initially mutate and it had changed the life courses for Sam’s race. The virus had allowed for a longer lifetime and immunity to all disease while also restoring an infertile woman’s capability to reproduce. It was a monumental achievement, but at what cost when everything went wrong. 

“When it did mutate it started with the women who were already carrying it, slowly reversing the benefits and by the time we knew the effects of the mutation it was too late. The infection had become airborne and the incubation period was a few mere hours.”

“Show me,” Marcus demanded, his voice a mixture of control and anger. The mindscape transformed into the street above, having since been repaired years after the terrorist attack. The hospital had taken over the street, fabric and plastic tents filling the city in every corner containing the infected in mass droves. The few hours it took for the virus to transform to mere contagion to widespread pathogen meant that if it could be contained it would spread no further, however the population was too widespread and most had already been inoculated with it when final testing had been approved. It couldn’t be contained.

Marcus pushed the flap of the nearest tent aside and stepped inside to the horror that awaited. He gagged as he watched an older man grasp at the boils that had formed along his throat and face, red splotches of serous fluid dripping from the purple pustules that exploded at random causing severe pain as evident by the consistent screams that rang out across the city. 

“The worst part was that the strain worked,” Sam said as she followed him in. “It catapulted us into a new stage of evolution, and then it brought us further down than ever before. The cruelest irony is that of the originally infected, the ones who survived became the first to develop an attribute, and remained fertile for a time.”

“You had more children,” Marcus pointed out. 

“I had three,” she said taking a steadying breath. “They’re all dead now. Shuri, my daughter, died from the initial mutation. Meris, my eldest daughter, survived, developed an attribute similar to mine, and founded the rebels in the interior to fight back against her father and me. She died during the eugenics wars. I watched as she was strung up at the gates of the city as a warning, and it was her father who ordered it.”

“You didn’t stop it,” Marcus said, the shock and confusion furrowing his brow.

“I wasn’t there,” Sam exhaled her words stuttering as she said them. “I was on Alpha Site at the time. Cyrus never even told me. I watched the broadcast as it happened. They kept her hooded until the last moment.”

Marcus felt the urge to put his fist through the imaginary walls forming around them. So many dead and for what. The maniacal desires of one man that had thrown an entire world into chaos. He didn’t consider Sam blameless, but he found it difficult reconciling the woman he knew with the one he was learning about. His shoulders rose and fell as he tried to calm the seething anger that was leaking through his control. 

“Why would he kill his own child?” Marcus had committed to sacrificing children once, but after returning to Earth would never have dreamed of putting a child at risk again if he could take their place. Sacrifice for his people became his way to ensure their survival, but Cyrus had done the opposite and offered up his own people, his own child in his place. 

“Cyrus’s fanatical desire to improve our species may have started with reproduction, but it transformed into purification. He saw his own children as smears on what would become his legacy.”

“The third?”

“My son.” The small smile that lifted the edge of her mouth would have been invisible to all, except for Marcus whose sharp eyes caught the tiniest of details. “He was a Paladin, on Caryx when Cyrus purged them. Just one more genocide in a long list.”

The room began to shift around them returning to the now empty cells of the lab. A glass container the size of a small vehicle sat in the centre of the room with Young Sam trapped inside it. 

“What now?” Marcus said as Sam wobbled and knelt on the floor. He kept his distance from her this time, still reeling from what he’d just learned. The lifetimes of experience that weighed her down were monumental in comparison to his own, and he couldn’t fathom the strength it took to go on knowing the responsibility she felt for the actions leading to the atrocities on Caryx. 

“It’s my quarantine,” Sam explained as she dragged herself towards the cell until she could lean against the glass, resting her fevered head against its cool panes. “It’s the last thing I need to show you.” Marcus surveyed the display as Young Sam hooked herself up to tubes and devices inside the chamber, constantly being poked and prodded, samples being taken in numerous unpleasant ways as Cyrus and the others tried to understand the progression of the virus. 

“Cyrus was the only person I saw at first. Just one hundred and thirty days of him and the walls of that cell. The others weren’t allowed entrance until we were sure the strain couldn’t infect them. He was driven to find a solution to stabilize it, especially after my attribute began to emerge.”

“He was interested.”

“Anything he could use,” she nodded. “Every time he came near the cell, he suffered an unusual coma immediately afterwards that lasted hours. When the others used his nanite data to confirm my suspicion they found a total energy drain from the neurochemical network that passes information in our bodies.”

“Pretend like I know what that means,” he said while raising one eyebrow higher than Sam thought possible.

“Without that energy to pass instructions along our central and peripheral systems the body can’t function. It should’ve killed him, and would have if he’d spent more time in my proximity. See, I didn’t know how to control my developing attribute at that time.”

“Our shared ability to manipulate and direct energy,” Marcus understood. “I didn’t realize it could do that. You stopped it though.”

“You can’t stop it,” Sam explained. “Unfortunately, our attribute is constant. Yours hasn’t manifested as quickly, or as powerfully, as mine did, but you will need to learn to control it as well.” Marcus nodded, watching the process as Young Sam gave instructions to the others in the lab, commanding and stern as Cyrus countered her orders with his own. He could tell the battle for supremacy between the two of them had already begun, each one trying to out do the other, to find a solution before the consequences worsened. 

“Cyrus had the idea to use my cells to create a neutralization reaction that would negate my attribute if it became active beyond my control, unfortunately that would only work in a living organism. 

“More test subjects,” Marcus bristled at the confirmation from Sam.

“It was dangerous, and yes they brought in people to test it on,” Sam described in as simple terms as she could without getting graphic about the results of those experiments. “After a while, Cyrus thought we only needed a stronger host, so he volunteered. He had developed a physical attribute which made his body impenetrable, so the theory was sound.” Marcus said nothing, but the simmering anger drifted right below the surface of the calm he was trying to emit. 

“After months of trials we found a way to artificially synthesize my attribute with the reverse affect,” Sam paused as she watched it play out. She pressed a bloody hand to the glass as the blood from her ears had soaked down through her clothing to her hands. “What I helped make was much worse.”

Marcus took her hand and followed the bloody pathway back to her head where small slashes along her neck and back were starting to open. Her back was soaked through as he pulled his hand away, soaked with blood. Marcus lifted her shirt and found the hundreds of tiny scars that lined her body were open as if they were fresh, spilling fresh blood unto the floor. 

“That’s enough,” he ordered. “I’m waking you.”

“Not yet,” she wheezed as she fell back onto the floor. “You need to watch. Please, trust me.”

“No Sam, I’m pulling you out.” Marcus tried to take over the mindscape but felt the ever-present wall of her blocking him. He couldn’t break through her mindscape unless she let him, and as stubborn as ever, she wouldn’t allow it. Marcus tried to visualize the crack in the illusion that would show him the way out, but her mind was flawless, practiced, and controlled. His shoulders dropped; the defeat evident in the slump of his back as he knelt beside her. “I don’t know how much more of this you can take.”

“We’re almost there,” she said as her eyes fluttered closed. She kept talking even though she couldn’t see the actions around her. It was as if she was narrating the scene from a movie instead of reliving it. “We are reservoirs of energy, absorbing and redirecting, but Cyrus is more like a black hole. When the synthesis of the attribute took hold it did negate mine, somewhat, but not completely, and had one unfortunate side-effect.”

Marcus felt a strange pressure around the room as Cyrus hopped off an operating table, yanking needles and tubes from his arms and neck. Marcus thought the stress of the situation was affecting him, but then he noticed the other scientists in the room. The group of men and women were plastered to the floor as if the gravity in the room had quadrupled. Some crawled out of range of Cyrus and managed to recover, but one man too close to him couldn’t move, and seemed to be struggling to breathe. 

“Where you and I can direct the energy we absorb, Cyrus can’t,” she stopped for a minute. Marcus thought she might have passed out when her fingers found his hand and squeezed. “Still here, don’t worry.”

“You won’t stop will you,” Marcus said as he closed his fingers around hers and lifted her head into his lap.

“I can’t,” she spoke at barely a whisper. “Cyrus’s attribute is a bubble, and anything within that circumference dies.” Marcus watched as the scientist on the ground trembled and wheezed as his lungs deflated, Cyrus looking on with mild fascination as he felt the surge of energy under his skin before it too vanished. Then Cyrus did something Marcus wasn’t expecting, he smiled, marched over to Sam’s cell and swung the door wide, stepping inside and embracing her tightly. 

“We did it,” he exclaimed. Young Sam looked on in horror as he sprung from the sides of the cell as if a member of their team hadn’t just died in agony in the floor of their lab. “Now we can do everything we need to. Our people will survive, and be better than ever.”

“I gave him that power and it destroyed him completely,” Sam peeked through the slits of her lids. “I feared if he developed it further, he could one day destroy the entire planet, so the seven of us, without him, created a contingency.”

“To kill him?” Marcus asked.

“To contain him,” she shook her head, the blood loss causing her mind the swivel and spin causing the mindscape around them to do the same. “We built a two-pronged device and implanted part of it in the planet’s core, and the other inside the event horizon of the singularity. It tethers him, by his nanites, to the overwhelming energy of Caryx, and the alternate inside the black hole withdraws any extra. The process keeps…” Sam was drifting off.

“Sam, wake up,” Marcus brushed the hair from her eyes and held tight to her head. “Wake up. That’s it we’re done.”

“Sorry, not happening,” she choked as blood leaked from her mouth. “His attribute is kept in check and prevents him from leaving the planet.”

“Then he won’t be leading the attack on Alpha Site,” Marcus understood and the realization suddenly of what Sam was planning felt like he’d been hurtled against the wall. “You want to attack him on Caryx.”

“See, I knew you’d get it,” Sam smirked as her fingers relaxed as she began to slip away.

“Oh no you don’t,” Marcus said as he pulled her up to lean against his chest. “We’re getting out of here.”

“Through the doors,” she groaned as she lifted a bloody finger towards a pair of white doors on the wall near them. “It’ll release my control. See you on the other side.” Sam’s full weight fell back on him as he wrapped his one arm around her back and the other under her knees, lifting her like a child in his arms as he ran for the door. The doors swung open as he approached, but the last thing he heard was an eerie laugh from behind him. As the doors closed, he could see Cyrus’s gaze following them through as if he existed in the present with them and was seeing everything they’d seen.

Marcus felt an icy cage around his heart as the doors sealed and the mindscape shifted to his own. The residual affect of what he’d witnessed left a bitter taste in his mouth, biting back the bile that threatened to rise if he let it. It only took a second for him to wake from the mindscape, but Sam remained unconscious, and worse the bleeding from her ears, mouth, and the scars on her body persisted in reality. He felt nervously along the pulse point of her throat to see if her heart was still beating. It wasn’t. He lifted her back into his arms with every intention of carrying her the distance to the medical wing before she vanished from his arms in a blinding flash leaving nothing but the tingling sensation on his skin and her blood on his uniform. And then he ran.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Love any feedback or comments. Thank you for reading!! ♥


	15. Escape

_Caryx (Origin Planet below Alpha Site) – T – 2 Days_

“Wake up,” the voice yelled over the collapsing walls around the dormitory. Her head was pounding and her fever raged leaving a trail of sweat meandering it’s path down her back. Abby hadn’t felt this horrible since her morning sickness with Clarke had kicked in. Her lids felt heavy against her eyes and impossible to open. “Wake up,” the voice yelled again this time accompanied by a hand wrapping around her arm and pulling her away from where she lay. 

The tension was too much on her arm as she felt her shoulder pop from its socket and she screamed, her eyes shooting open as she kicked out against her captor. Her arm hung limp at her side as she finally took in her surroundings. The lab dormitory was in ruins with three gaping holes exploded outward into the abandoned tunnel section alongside them. 

“Abby,” Raven whined as another masked soldier tugged her away from a collapsing wall. 

“Get off me,” Abby shouted as she dragged herself towards Raven kicking the soldier trying to grab her away.

“Look I’m trying to help you,” he said. He pulled his mask down and met the same green eyes and fiery red hair she’d seen before from Cyrus. The soldier was his spitting image minus the roundness to his face and the gentle smile he tried to convey through the panic of the moment. “I’m Kai, Octavia must have mentioned me.”

Abby only took a second to assess his uniform, dirty, used, and torn to shreds, clearly not one of Cyrus’s men. It was enough for now. She ignored him as she pulled Raven as best as her one arm could handle while attempting to stand on her weakened legs. 

“Get her on the cot now,” Abby said as she seized on leg while Kai took the other. 

“We don’t have time for this,” Kai shouted. He found who he was looking for in the massive hole that had been blown in the tech lab wall. “Get them out.” It was the last thing Abby heard him say before six masked soldiers were filing into the dormitory carrying an unconscious Sinclair and Thelonius. Octavia, Diyoza, and Roan were thrown about the room, but it only took mere moments for them to be hauled to their feet and pushed towards to hole. 

“Roan, take Raven,” Abby called as the only member still partially standing, as weakened as he was and with his hand still twisted and healing, he was still capable of carrying a load. He lifted Raven easily as the girl murmured something unintelligible between bouts of seizures. 

“Let’s go,” Kai ordered as the rest of his team pushed them towards their escape.

“No, we can’t leave yet,” Abby gasped as she tried to take in a clean breath of air in all the smoke coming from the explosion sites. “The others in the pods.”

“We can’t take them,” Kai said. “Take her.” Two others stepped over the collapsed wall and shoved her towards the hole. 

“No, I won’t leave them.”

“Abby,” Jake hollered. 

“Jake we can’t leave them,” Abby cried. “Jackson, the others, Clarke, please.” It was all it took for Jake to go running back out into the lab towards the stasis chamber. Abby could hear the bolts from energy rifles firing over the cracking beams that were crushing the lab equipment. “Wait, the toxin is still intact. We can still use it.”

“What?” Kai was confused. Abby ran back into the lab, her arm limp at her side, as she ducked behind flipped tables to reach the sealed refrigeration unit behind the tech lab. Miraculously, it hadn’t been damaged in the explosions. She typed the code Jackson had reprogrammed to ensure Tanis and the guards couldn’t find what they were up to. The silver canister inside burned her hand when she grabbed it, freezing the metal to her skin. It didn’t matter, they were ready for this.

“Masks on,” Abby screamed over the noise. She pulled the air purifier from inside her shirt and bit down on the mouthpiece breathing in clean air for the first time since the tech lab blew. Her other arm was useless, so with a quick twist of the valve on top the sedative gas sprayed out in a thick blue mist. Abby flung the canister as far towards the stairs as she could as more shots pinged off the broken metal around the lab. She was a target in the open and had no way back to the dormitory now without directly running through the crossfire. But she didn’t have to.

Jake waved around the doors of the stasis chamber. Abby couldn’t make out the others through the smoke but she counted five with one carrying a still male form over his shoulder. They ran for the exit as shots bounced off the glass, reflecting back on them. Kai fired metal projectile bullets towards Tanis’s men who flooded the upper viewing deck of the lab, and with their armour accustom to warding off energy rounds he managed to keep them there until the others ducked inside the dorm. 

Abby stumbled towards the door until she made it through with Kai wasting no time shoving her through the hole and forcing her down a tire sized rusty tunnel that clearly was used at one point for waste disposal. The noxious fumes left over from the slick rotting refuse clung to the walls, but thankfully Raven’s breathing respirators worked perfectly. Abby tried, and failed a couple times, to allocate her breathing solely to her purifier but when she accidentally inhaled through her nose a couple times, she instantly regretted it, retching up the little in her stomach and replacing the purifier back in her mouth.

Kai pushed her from behind, occasionally stopping and embedding a spherical device in the walls of the tunnel. Abby watched as he altered the settings causing the first to explode, sealing the tunnel, the next to open a separate tunnel entrance alongside a perpendicular line that would confuse others following, and the last to seal their escape completely with a diamond-like crystal matrix that spread across the circumference of the pipeline and growing outwards, almost chasing them. 

It felt like they spent hours in those tunnels, crawling hands and feet completely submerged in slimy muck the closer they got to where they were going. Abby could feel the elevation and decline in the pipe, wherever they were going it was far enough under the city and out that they might just be heading for the open water. Her hands and knees were scrapped raw by the time the tunnel emptied into a dimly lit underground reservoir where the others were all slumped against a fenced in wall. 

“Abby,” Raven squealed as she ran to her wrapping her arms tightly around her small frame. 

“Ow, careful, arm,” Abby hissed as her shoulder pulled the tendons and ligaments from their normal resting place. “You’re clearly feeling better.”

“Here,” Kai said as he pressed a needle to her neck. Abby punched his hand away with her uninjured fist, but she could already feel the affects of the drug administered to her body. It wasn’t the same stimulant as what Tanis had been using, she could tell by the subtle sensation that warmed her vessels versus the scorching adrenaline inducing stimulant they’d been subjected to. “It’s just meant to stabilize your bodies so they won’t degrade further. Based on your expected timeline, you probably only have a couple days left before they give out and you all die, so a little gratitude might serve you well.”

Abby got her first look around the room as her eyes landed on the five additional shadows gracing the wall behind the soldiers who’d freed them. The soldiers didn’t stand aside as she approached. She even tried to push through but they blocked her.

“You can either help me, or get out of my way,” she stared, her small stature paling in comparison to them, but it was the look that could’ve killed. The soldiers glanced at Kai who simply raised his hands to acquiesce and shook his head as she pushed her way through. 

“It’s good to see you again Abby.”

“Indra,” Abby smiled for the first time in what felt like forever. She raised her hand and shook the Grounders with gleeful abandon. Jackson stood from the wall behind her, his head swollen and his one pupil still blown wide, but he clearly had been treated even by the brief time he spent in the stasis pods. He reached her and wrapped an arm around her neck before gently maneuvering her shoulder back into its socket.

Her eyes glanced over the familiar faces that were still alive and looked to be in better condition than they had been after the injections from Cyrus, but they stopped when she met the newest additions to their group. Lexa stood proudly in front of the others, Abby recognized Luna’s curly hair and athletic frame before she even turned around from her presence during the conclave, already suspicious of her environment and of their rescuers, but it was the bodies that seemed to be one, arms wrapped around each other and speaking in mumbled Trigedeslang that drew Abby’s astonishment. 

“Lincoln,” Abby whispered attempting to not break their moment. Octavia wasn’t letting him go. She’d come so far from who she was when Lincoln died, but here he was, that past erased, a future before them, if they survived, and Abby thought for once they may actually have a fighting chance. She smiled at the visible change she already was seeing in Octavia, but what it meant for them she didn’t know yet. Her eyes fell on the body lying curled in a ball on the floor of the tunnel, Jake hovering overtop searching back for her. 

“Abby here,” he pleaded. “She’s not breathing.” Abby ran forward to find her worst nightmare come true. Clarke, her blonde hair plastered to the damp sheen that covered her forehead, ghastly pale, and cold as ice, unconscious and pulseless lying on the floor with no vital responses. Her fingers found the artery at her neck, nothing, she felt for breath, pressed her hand to her chest and still felt nothing.

“Flip her on her back,” Abby instructed while already calculating the amount of time since they’d pulled her from the stasis chamber and the likelihood of brain damage. No oxygen, no blood flow, Abby wasn’t quite sure how the nanotech in their bodies worked but by her assumptions they were supposed to regulate body functions and decrease healing time significantly, so what was happening to Clarke?

“She isn’t going to wake up,” Kai said as he spun around from talking to the other soldiers, their rifles trained on each one of them.

“I’m not giving up,” Abby said as she started compressions on Clarkes chest. She’d left the medical kit her and Jackson had packed prior to the explosions. If she only had it now, she could do something.

Kai reached for her, but Jake stood between them. “I’m not going to harm either one of them, but you need to understand, your daughter isn’t in there, not yet anyway.”

“Her mind,” Abby murmured. 

“Yes,” Kai stood back giving them space to process what he was about to say. “You didn’t retrieve it from the engram storage, so essentially she’s just an empty shell.”

Jake pushed forward. “I got her out of there, the others are awake, alive and well, why isn’t she?”

“Cyrus doesn’t like to keep valuable assets all in one place. It isn’t strategically sound. My best guess is he still has her mind locked in their network, however the nanites will keep her body stable for a short time outside the stasis pods. She will need to be placed back in one soon though, or the body will shutdown without a host mind to operate it.”

“You’re speaking as if she’s a machine,” Abby said.

“In a way we all are, to a point,” Kai said. “We can discuss that later; we have a fifteen-minute window to blow the connection line at the end of this tunnel and merge with the underwater cistern that will take us out of the city. If we don’t get there Tanis will catch us.”

Roan stood pulling Raven up by the collar of her shirt and pushing her away from the grate that blocked their path. “Time to go,” he said as he pulled the bars free from the rusted sections against the wall. 

“Hands off,” Raven growled as she pulled her shirt down. 

“He’s right,” Diyoza chimed in forcing the others two their feet. “Let’s move.” She reached for the grate tearing free a rusted five-foot bar from the rail. “You coming,” she asked Kai and his soldiers as they stood back watching the grounders arm up with rusted piping and metal shives they’d ripped from the walls. 

“Who are you people?” Kai asked a little bewildered. 

Octavia stood with Lincoln by her side, the two complete halves reconnected and ready. They approached two of the soldiers without any hesitation and removed the short knives from their armoured vests. “We’ve fought before.”

“I gather that,” Kai smiled as he dismissed the brazen act and shook his head at the soldiers charging the energy shells on their weapons. He waved them forward as they set a blistering pace down the tunnel they could thankfully stand up in. 

There were too many intersecting passages for Abby to keep track of their route, but she kept a careful eye on Kai and his men as they seemed to have the only datapad with the original incomplete map of the underground network of tunnels. They didn’t hesitate to push the others harder surrounding the group and driving them on as if herding cattle. The Grounders didn’t say much and when they did speak it was in muttered Trig so their rescuers couldn’t understand, or at least they hoped they couldn’t understand them. 

The time spent dodging dripping corroded pipes allowed for Abby to gauge the group’s condition. For the most part, they had escaped relatively unscathed, but as Kai had pointed out, she knew they were on borrowed time, and what happened next would determine their survival. She knew little of Kai’s motives accept that he was consulting with Octavia and Diyoza to help them escape, but why was the question that kept pervading her thoughts. Worse, Clarke was unconscious and not likely to wake up without them finding a way to recover her mind, but that would mean an attempt to break back in to Cyrus’s facility, and in their current condition that was unlikely, however Abby was already running the possibilities through her head as the new Grounder reinforcements would greatly raise their chances. She’d seen Luna and Lincoln fight, and had heard enough about Grounder tactics from Octavia and Clarke to know Lexa was a fierce warrior when pushed and Indra had always been able to hold her own. 

Abby didn’t know when or where they would be heading, but the small moments shared between the group seemed enough to give her hope for something better to come. Jackson, Clarke and Raven were safe, or as safe as they could be given the circumstances, Roan kept a careful watch on Raven as he helped lead the way with Kai down the passage, remaining close enough to Raven to catch her when her leg gave out. Despite the nanotech in their bodies, it was evident by their deteriorating state and physical ability that the original group was waning fast. It wouldn’t be long before they started losing control of their functions. 

Kai kept checking the pad for the timeframe, considering alternate routes that would decrease their egress time. It was when a dull rumble shook the pipe around them that Kai froze, kneeling into the stream of water running under their feet and placed his hand against the cold metal underneath. 

“Drilling,” he mumbled. “Scanner now,” he demanded as one of the soldiers pulled a handheld scanner from inside the bag strapped to his back. Kai activated it and hurriedly passed it over each one of them in turn until he knelt over Clarke’s body. “Should have known he’d tag his bargaining chip.”

“What’s going on?” Abby said attempting to keep her tone neutral despite the worry behind it. 

“Your daughter is tagged,” Kai explained. “Her nanites are sending a tracking signal out for anyone to pick up. We have to leave her behind.”

“No,” Jake pressed forward blocking his daughter from Kai. “How do we remove them?”

“We can’t,” Kai said. “Our window expires in two-minutes. We have another junction we can lose them at, but they’re drilling right above us. If we take her we don’t get out, and this is all for nothing.”

“We’re not leaving our daughter,” Abby and Jake stood side by side forming an impenetrable wall between the soldiers and Clarke. The radiating power from the two parents was enough to make Kai back off slightly, but it didn’t change the events unfolding. 

“This isn’t wise,” Kai sighed. 

“Then we don’t do the smart thing,” Octavia piped in. “We do the unexpected.” Diyoza smirked as she nudged Octavia’s shoulder.

“They aren’t expecting resistance,” Diyoza said. “But they are expecting the group of us.”

“What do you have in mind?” Kai asked, his curiosity winning out over his caution. He did want to see the fighters from Earth in action, but he definitely wasn’t expecting to test that theory while escaping. 

“How long would it take to double back and come at them from behind?” Diyoza asked. 

“We could cover the ground back to the last junction,” Kai interpreted as he scanned the digital map looking for the nearest exit that would allow them to come behind their quarry unawares. 

“They would expect resistance if they’ve seen our memories,” Abby said. “Which we know they have.”

Lexa listened intently. She’d been studying the route they were taking to the sea and had her own ideas of how to dissuade their pursuers. “If we force them into a battle on two fronts, they’re likely to retreat or suffer heavy losses.”

“We force their hand,” Luna agreed. “We drive them to the water where our second group will be waiting, and we use Clarke as the diversion.”

“I’m staying with my daughter,” Abby interrupted. 

“You should all stay,” Kai recommended. “At least the ones who are unable to fight. You can act as the decoys in case they get through the bedrock above.”

“I’m in,” Octavia said, Lincoln agreeing beside her. 

“Alright, three teams. One to the water line, one to back through the tunnels, and the decoy team to remain with Clarke,” Kai reiterated. “I’ll place two armed escorts with each team, agreed.”

They all nodded, their rough fashioned weapons gathered and prepared. Luna and Lexa split between the two attacking teams, Diyoza insisted on being part of the tailing team, and Indra preferred the direct combat likely to happen at the beach. Octavia smacked the rusted pipe against the floor shattering the edge and creating a jagged spear. Lincoln wasn’t going to leave her side any time soon.

Kai just shook his head as he slipped the datapad into Abby’s hands, his frustration evident. “Alright, this is idiocy personified. We have little chance of success and a high certainty of death, but looks like you lot are looking for a good fight, so try not to get killed.”

“What do you get out of all this?” Thelonius asked having waited while the plan was established, considering alternatives and finding none that would see them to freedom while also ensuring no casualties. If a fight had to happen, he was damn sure to be on the right side of it. 

Kai slung his rifle over his shoulder and drew an arm-length blade with an orange laser lit tip from its sheath at his side. “I get to end a war. Good enough for you.” Kai growled as his glare met the lot of them. “Let’s go.”

The two groups filed out of the cistern as fast as possible, running down the tunnels, their boots rapping against the metal on the sides of the tunnel and the splash of water echoing back through the pipes. Abby focused on the sporadic tapping of metal on metal followed by the grinding screech of the drill above them. If they broke through before the teams reached their objective, the group below would have to stave them off until their reinforcements arrived. Abby knew from looking at them they were living on fumes and it was only a matter of time before they reached their expiration date. 

“Abby,” Jake whispered as his fingers gently rested on her shoulder giving the slightest comforting squeeze. “This’ll work,”

“It has to,” she agreed interlacing her fingers with his. She hadn’t been able to rest since the explosions, much less think about the facts of the past half an hour, but now, in the bleak stillness of the musty tunnel she finally understood the absent feeling that was beginning to flood her mind. Lexa, Luna, Lincoln, and Indra came out of those pods, Clarke was a shell with her mind trapped somewhere, and she was only just realizing she would never see Marcus again. Her heart jumped into her throat as the banging on the pipe above them intensified. They were about to break through, and she may die, with her daughter stuck in a living death, a man she loved beside her, but not the man she wanted beside her. 

“May we meet again,” she murmured to the dark, hoping against hope that maybe some power in the universe would hear her prayer and bring him back to her.

The grinding came to a halt above their heads. One loud crash and the ceiling caved in piling bedrock, rusted metal and sand in a pile beside them. Smoke screens followed, some falling into the water rendering them ineffective, but enough bounced off the walls to land behind dry grates. Abby and the others bit down on the breathing apparatus ensuring the smoke wouldn’t affect their lungs, but the smoke stung their eyes. 

A team of Tanis’s soldiers swung down into the chamber, rifles at the ready, shooting already as the sightlines locked Kai’s men as targets. Two shots and they hit the ground, steaming holes leaving a trail of brain spatter across the wall behind them. Roan emerged from beneath the water line, two oxidized bars broken off the grate in each hand. He swung them with deadly accuracy and at such close range he had the advantage, but his attacks were weaker than he would be at full strength. Tanis’s men took the brunt of his attacks with barely a grunt until he managed to slice a critical tendon at a knee. The guard shrieked and dropped leaving him wide open. Roan wasted no time in plunging the other bar right through his eye.

Raven had already picked up the rifle from the fallen men and was peppering the soldiers following behind the initial wave with projectile rounds, piercing their armour and leaving them hanging from the ceiling by the ropes they couldn’t disengage. 

“Now,” Abby yelled. Jake and Thelonius barrelled around the corner and tackled the three remaining men, and with all three on their backs, they had little trouble pressing them under the water line until they drown on sludge. The two men fell into a rhythm together as if their friendship had never changed.

The peppering of bullets and familiar pang of the energy rounds fired above the hole. The attack teams were engaging Tanis’s forces on the surface and from the sounds of it, they were holding their own. 

Jake hefted Clarke onto his shoulders as they dragged themselves down the tunnel following the markers scratched into the walls left by Kai. The stimulant Kai gave them was starting to wear off, but the adrenaline was enough to push them through even with the fatigue making their muscles ache to the point of seizing. 

They reached the aperture dumping out into a small overhang that emptied into the sea. Jumping down into the water they felt a certain ease feeling the salt in the water help them float without having to put in much effort. Sinclair ended up with a mouthful of the water and quickly spat it out, the fluid stealing the moisture from his lips with the salt content. 

“Don’t drink it,” Sinclair sputtered.

“We’re standing underneath a sewer outlet,” Thelonius groaned as an open wound filled with the salty water. “I wouldn’t drink this for other reasons.”

“Good point,” Sinclair moaned as he dragged his body from the water. 

The sand was coarse and cut at their skin, the beach sparkling with the effect of a thousand glass shards that combined with the white sand. It was blinding, dangerous, and beautiful all at the same time. Abby caught sight of Octavia and Diyoza squaring off against a small squadron of troops, with Lexa and Luna breaking through the ranks from behind. Indra had managed to steal a rifle and her and Lincoln were spraying rounds at the troops and picking them off as they fell. 

It was like watching a brutal dance. Each side pushing back with either more force, or increasing resilience. They had taken the advantage and were beginning to push the soldiers into the water when something changed. 

Abby felt it first. A feeling behind her eyes. She recognized the sensation and immediately pushed Jake back into the water, Clarke still balanced on his shoulders.

“Abby, what the…”

“Shhhh,” Abby stressed as her palm covered his mouth. The others were already on the beach. It wouldn’t matter if she called them back. It was too late. The pressure built up around them pressing down into the water until only their heads stayed afloat. They couldn’t see the beach anymore, but they could hear as the fighting came to a standstill. The soundless calm surrounding sent a shiver down her spine as she gently pushed Jake back towards the sewer opening. 

“You can’t escape,” Cyrus’s voice boomed over the water. Abby felt his crushing presence in the back of her mind as if he was banging a hammer inside her skull. Jake’s nose started to bleed, but it was the flutter behind Clarke’s eyes that gave her the most worry. She shouldn’t have any function at all, but she was responding to Cyrus. “Five seconds, or I start killing your friends. Five, four…”

“Stop, stop,” Abby screamed as they dragged themselves out of the water. It took her a couple seconds to adapt to the sun reflecting off the red sand, but when her eyes adjusted the sight the met her was astonishing. The united front of the Grounders, Kai, his men, and Diyoza had nearly wiped out an entire squadron of Cyrus’s forces. Sixty bodies lay dead, or injured on the beach with others limping back towards the medic tents in the city. 

“You’ve cost me today,” Cyrus said, the gentle hum of his voice hiding the malice beneath. “It’s only fair you pay for that.”

Tanis stomped through the sand, the glass beneath crunching under his boots, until he reached the trio. Snatching Clarke from Jake seemed almost effortless as Jake’s energy was waning from the fight. Abby wanted to throttle Tanis with every ounce of energy her tiny body could muster, but one look from him told her he would enjoy it too much. The glint in his eye as he dragged Clarke’s body up the hill, the glass cutting through the white shorts and shirt from the pod and leaving them in tatters. Abby and Jake winced at the blood trail that followed after them. 

The soldiers threw them down, their knees sinking into the sand. The pressure was waning as Cyrus paced the line of captives he had to choose from. He stepped behind their backs, wrapped one hand around the necks of Kai’s men and snapped their necks without a thought. 

“NO!” Kai howled as he hopped to his feet intent on bloody revenge. Cyrus had him suspended by one hand, his fingers wrapped tightly around his throat and squeezing to within a inch of causing severe harm, before he stopped. 

“You still haven’t learned your lesson boy,” Cyrus sneered. “Maybe it’s time for a different approach.” Cyrus threw Kai atop the pile of bodies that had formed during the fight. “Bring me the Doctor.”

Tanis grabbed Abby by her hair and dragged her past the rest of them and threw her at Cyrus’s feet. She straightened immediately, determined to demonstrate that they were not going easily. She would fight tooth and nail to the finish to protect those around her. All of them. It was in the briefest of moments that she realized she really meant it. She’d blamed Lexa for Mount Weather, the Grounders for the dead kids, Luna for the danger in the conclave, Roan for Azgeda’s betrayal in Polis, and Octavia for the bunker, but in the end none of it mattered. They were unified against an enemy on a strange world, and if they only had each other than she would die fighting for them as much as for any other. They were One Kru. The irony of that thought was not lost on Abby as a manic giggle rumbled from her chest.

“Something amusing Doctor?” Cyrus asked his eyes sunken and hollow as if the energy to keep them subdued was draining him. 

Abby shook her head. “No, just ironic.” She forced her mind to calm as she searched the terrain around them for anything they could use. Remember her lessons on Earth, searching for a passage that could lead to their salvation, but nothing was obvious, and time had run out. 

Cyrus knelt beside her, a gentle small stretching the thinning skin around his mouth, but it didn’t reach his eyes. Nothing seemed to. If Abby didn’t know any better, she’d have sworn he was already dead.

“Choose,” he sighed as he seized her hand, stretched her palm and drew the edge of a ruby dagger across her palm. Abby screamed as she cradled her hand against her chest, the blood soaking her hand and arm, dripping onto the sand below. He shoved the hilt of the dagger into her other hand and stood back. “Choose,” he repeated.

“What?” Abby said, biting back the pain. The skin was already stitching itself together, albeit slowly, but it didn’t stem the blood flow rushing to her fingers. 

“You were warned at the beginning,” he said stroking the hair that had fallen into her eyes behind her ear. Abby inwardly cringed at his touch, but she wouldn’t show it. “You and your people took lives from me today. Soldiers I need, but no matter.” He leaned in so only she could hear him. “The difference between us is my people are irrelevant, but yours have meaning to you. You will choose one, and end their yourself, or I will kill them all.”

Abby’s heart skipped as the dagger came to life in her hand, the blood-soaked blade glowing a brilliant red, and the heat of it coursing up her arm. It burned as a flaming spark of energy coiled around her wrist and gripped tightly. Her fingers released as the skin smoked and sizzled, but the dagger wouldn’t release. Abby’s low scream echoed over the water, and as far as the city before it faded out. She bit the inside of her mouth, tasting blood and trying to hold back the whimpering cry that fought its way out. 

“This is the traitor’s blade,” Cyrus explained as if he was lecturing a group of students, calm and passive, his voice steady and monotone. “You have two choices, either take a life with it and it will release you, or hold it tight, and slowly it will increase it’s energy delivery until it burns you from the inside out. Your life, or one of theirs.” 

Abby’s eyes were dark with rage, but the pain was overtaking her. Every nerve in her arm was aflame, and the longer she waited the more the sensation travelled, already reaching her neck and passing down into her chest. She felt the fingers of the coiling energy around her lungs as they burned, emitting blood up through her breath. 

“You don’t have long,” Cyrus said.

“I won’t,” Abby cried.

“How about this one?” Tanis grinned as he kicked Raven’s back landing her face first in the sand, her hands secured behind her back. “Her body has almost expired, might as well end it quickly.”

“No!” Roan roared as he leapt to his feet shoulder hitting Tanis broadside right under his ribs. Tanis was taken aback and wasn’t able to catch himself as he hit the ground hard. Roan planted his knee over the man’s throat and found Cyrus’s cold stare. “Release them both, or your man dies.”

Cyrus didn’t blink. He simply looked at the soldiers behind the others and inclined his chin so slightly Roan almost missed it. The soldiers placed the muzzle of their weapons against the heads of each of them in turn. Abby continued to scream as the dagger cooked her skin, travelling deeper into her core.

“Five seconds your majesty,” Cyrus taunted. Roan pushed down harder until Tanis’s eyes began to roll back. The shot rang out loud and all eyes spun around to find Thelonius face down in the sand, a bleeding hole leaking out the back of his skull where it painted to sand a dark red, adding to the already bloodstained beach. Sinclair kneeling beside him, exhaled slowly as he felt the blunt muzzle of the gun press hard to his head.

“Stop, please, stop,” Abby wailed. The pain was too much, but she would bear it if it meant no one else would die. “Roan stop.” Tanis took his distraction and dislodged his knee long enough to throw him back, launching him ten feet off the ground and hurling him like a doll against the unburied section of piping. 

“That one is next,” Tanis barked through a nearly crushed larynx. 

“You intend to die, don’t you Abigail,” Cyrus nodded as he understood. “Admirable, if but a waste. The things you could’ve done here, in my new world.”

“I don’t take life,” Abby spat, the fluid that sprayed from her mouth a mixture of blood and blackened lung tissue. “You’ll have a life, but no one else.” Cyrus tilted his head, agreeing to her terms. 

Her strength waned as she fell limp, her eyes rolled back and finally the blackness of oblivion began to take her, but she didn’t hit the ground. She couldn’t quite make out the whirring sounds breathing life into her through her ears, but the arms were familiar, strong, and wrapped her completely, keeping her safe, always safe. Abby felt the urge to sleep, her nerves burned out completely leaving her numb to everything. 

“I couldn’t help you then,” he whispered holding her tight to him, almost too tight, but she didn’t care. “It seems we always end up here.”

Abby couldn’t open her eyes. She could feel the salty tears stream down her face, stinging as they rolled over the cracks in her lips. She wouldn’t allow it, not again. Using the last bit of strength she had she opened her eyes and stared into the ocean blue reflections of the man she’d loved, the man whose daughter held her every hope and dream, and the man who was still fighting for her.

“Don’t,” she begged him as his fingers ghosted down her arm to her wrist.

“I can’t watch you die,” Jake smiled in the only way he could while basking in Abby’s loving gaze. “I don’t have that strength.” The energy coil seared his palm as he pulled the blade across her chest, over her shoulder and pressed the blade tip to his heart.

“Jake no, please,” she begged. 

“Clarke needs you,” he said as he brushed the softest kiss against her temple. “When she wakes up, tell her something for me.” He breathed the words into her as if transferring his life into her. She inhaled, a staccato beat of tears ripping through her throat, as the hilt in her hand plunged backwards and sunk deep into Jake’s chest. “I love you.” 

Jake fell forward, his body a dead weight against her back as the hilt released from her grip and the blade clinked as it hit the glassy sand beneath them. Cyrus wrapped the blade hilt in cloth before sheathing it by his side.

“I rarely see poetry reflected in life so eloquently,” he said as the soldiers behind pulled Jake off of her. “I’d call that a worthy death. Jake Griffin, the twice dead man. It’s a noteworthy story. What did he tell you?”

Abby sniffed back her tears, wiped her eyes and pressed her feet into the ground, standing as tall as she could. “It’s not for you.” Her fists balled at her side as she fought every instinct not to wail on the man in front of her until he gasped his last breath. It wouldn’t be worth it, and it wouldn’t work, but the thought drove her.

Cyrus smiled and walked away as the soldiers pulled the others to their feet while Tanis dragged Kai away towards the central hub of the city. Abby wasn’t sure what would happen to him, or any of them now, but she swore before she died, she would see Cyrus to his end. 

“We have an understanding then,” Cyrus called as he marched away, his back already to the group.

“I will kill you for this,” she spat through a raw throat. 

“Better than you have tried,” Cyrus stopped, and turned his eyes glinting with the prospect of the challenge. “I look forward to your attempt.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was both difficult and easy to write, if that makes sense. Love comments and feedback. I hope you enjoy.


	16. The Ties that Bind

_Alpha Site: T – 1 Day_

The dark swallowed her vision, everywhere, except a tiny speck of light that seemed to buzz around, a firefly attracting her eyes to it. Sam couldn’t tell how long she’d been unconscious but she could feel the familiar cool of the glass beside her fingers and the soft cushion of the pod beneath her limbs and back. The weight of the artificial atmosphere should’ve been negligible, but in her weakened state she couldn’t have fought the gravitational pull of a mushroom. 

The soft folds of fabric over her eyes and the pin-prick impressions tingling over her skin meant only one thing, she was in medical and she had deteriorated to the point of requiring energy rejuvenation to survive. The pull of the freshly cut skin under her collarbone was enough to indicate she’d used her transport implant. She’d flatlined. Her heart was designed to kick into survival mode if her body should ever reach a fatal state, however something had failed. 

Sam ran her tongue over the cut in her lip tasting dried blood. Her wounds weren’t closing. She’d known there would be consequences to her experiments, but not this soon and not before the deadline date. It didn’t matter now, there was no turning back.

The pod blocked out all sound, but the gentle vibrations she felt through the glass meant someone was touching the glass. She tried to lift her arm only to feel the subdermal needles flooding her body with current pierce deeper. 

“Jansen,” she croaked, her tongue sticking to the roof of her mouth. “Release the pod.” Sam could sense his movements, the keypad beside the release console being struck and finally the burst of air when the latch released and the glass folded back. Jansen worked to remove the eye mask from her face, carefully withdrawing the glass tubes from her temples to release the electrical current circulating through her nervous system. Her eyes remained shut during the process as she waited for the medic to remove each and every needle point from her skin; patiently abiding the couple hundred zaps each one gave her on their removal. 

“If you do that again I’m sending you back to medical school,” Sam snarled as Jansen nicked another electrode causing an electric burst to shoot through her leg. It took every ounce of control she currently had not to allow the limb to kick him in the face. 

“Sorry Colonel,” he said with hesitation. “You should know we’re not alone.”

Sam had already felt his presence. Marcus’s particular energy felt like a warm spring breeze chasing away the melancholy chill of winter, and when in his presence Sam couldn’t help but taste the spice of it’s life on her senses. Her own was cool and deep, an endless pool stirred to life only through the few connections she had left, if only she’d allow herself to let it flow. Polar opposites, the negative and positive ends of a circuit, connected but always in opposition. Sam knew it, and understood the necessity of it.

“I’m aware,” she hushed as she felt the humming breaths of his slow exhale reverberate across the room. “He’s asleep. How long?”

“The transport node brought you in two hours ago, and he was close behind. He hasn’t left.”

When the final wire was disconnected, she dismissed Jansen and carefully opened her eyes. The space was as it should be, but her vision was not. The colours blended together leaving certain objects invisible to her while others appeared to float about the room as if in some sort of elliptical orbit with a central mass. She smiled as she realized the mass was Marcus, his energy attracting matter into his own orbit. Sam couldn’t make him out quite yet but the gentle whir of his breath in and out made him easy to locate. She examined her pale skin, running her fingers over the fresh edges of the open scars. The bleeding had stopped but the pink ridges of flesh that hadn’t knit together yet was something she was unaccustomed to seeing. It would have to wait for later she thought as she pulled grey slacks and a thin sleeveless shirt over her scarred legs and arms.

The prolonged exposure to her mindscape was not immediately her concern, nor was it imperative for her body to recover, she would see to that soon enough. No, it was more important that her eyes were not affected. She mentally opened the pathway between her optical attribute and her energy stores and flooded them, and sure as slipping on a pair of old gloves her vision restored bringing Marcus into full view. 

His head leaning back against the wall, arms half-crossed, legs splayed apart, and a quiet expression of peace resting on his face. It was the first time she’d seen him completely at rest in the time since she’d known him, and for once she saw the gentle soul behind the soldier, behind the man. Sam sighed as she brushed a curl of hair off his forehead, it stubbornly returning to its spot not a moment later. She knew he didn’t belong there; he didn’t need to be in another war, to fight another battle. If only she thought, if only. 

Marcus stirred, the gentle brush of her fingers enough to wake him. He always was a light sleeper and it didn’t take him long to come to his senses and notice Sam standing in front of him, a small smirk lifting the corner of her mouth. 

“Sleeping on the job cadet,” she teased. 

Marcus didn’t laugh, he didn’t smile, he just stood, his jaw tensing as Sam’s smile vanished, replaced with concern until he surprised her further, wrapping both arms around her back and hugging her as close as he could. Sam couldn’t remember the last time she’d been held, truly held. It was not an unwelcome sensation. Marcus’s head pressed against the side of her own, the subtle allure of his scent washing over her senses. His warm arms held tightly to her torso, raising his one hand to the back of her neck. Sam winced slightly as her scars stretched with the skin-on-skin contact. 

“I’m sorry,” he said as he pushed himself back.

“It’s okay,” she assured him not releasing his hands, the contact of another person too much to resist. “My body is just a little worse for ware.” His fingers interwove with her own, each of them trying to latch onto the other. He closed his eyes and shook his head, the briefest indiscriminate reaction as he took a deep breath and opened his eyes, they already glistening with the threat of unshed tears.

“You left me,” he said his penetrating gaze never leaving hers. Marcus outwardly wouldn’t admit the toll her loss would have on him. He’d lost too much in life already. 

“I told you I’d be fine,” she repeated the sentiment she’d said even before they’d first tried the drop so deeply into his own mindscape.

“But you weren’t,” his volume rose, a bitter anger cutting his words short. “Your body is evidence of that.”

Sam turned her hands inside his, his fingers refusing to let go as she examined her bare arms for the thousand deep cuts that now covered her skin. It was difficult to understand his concern. Sam had been nye invincible for so long it was hard for her to recognize the new limitations of her body or the affect it was having on the man before her, but thankfully she didn’t have to explain as Saryn came barreling in through the door, barely waiting for it to slide open. 

Marcus and Sam dropped their hands immediately, returning them to their sides. Saryn ran straight for Sam, stumbling to stop only once she saw the condition she was in. Saryn opened and closed her mouth a few times, quickly looking between both of them before Sam simply nodded as if giving permission to speak. 

“I heard what happened,” she whimpered as she brushed tears from her face. “I thought…”

“Nothing you could’ve done Lieutenant,” Sam stopped her. Saryn had been a war orphan found during one of the last conflicts of the Eugenics War. Sam had always encouraged her affection towards her, and in certain instances was the only person Sam trusted with critical information. Her loyalty was absolute, unquestionable, and was something Sam counted on for the days to come, however, standing there with Marcus carefully listening and interpreting their every word she knew Saryn would need to be careful about what was said.

Saryn recognized the order imperative simply by the curt tone Sam used. “Yes Colonel. I’m glad you’re okay. Major Ausin asked for you as soon as you’re able. He needs to discuss the final preparations for the ground contingent, and the inoculations of all Alpha Site personnel are eighty-five percent complete as of this morning.”

“Please inform the Major, that those plans are finished, and there is nothing else that needs to be said on the matter, furthermore I will be indisposed until this evening.”

“But, Colonel,” Saryn started.

“He’ll understand Lieutenant, trust me,” she smiled. “Good work on the inoculations. I expect them to be complete by the time I return.”

“Return?” Marcus stepped forward closing the space that had formed between them. Saryn didn’t miss the way his torso and feet turned to her, the way his hands rested against his hips as if he was subconsciously trying to block any predator from getting close to her. She saw the heightened awareness of his stance before the ring around his eyes emerged, but shrugged it off as being a result of their prolonged mission within Sam’s mindscape. 

“Yes,” Sam said without elaborating. Marcus didn’t know the extent to which Sam’s injuries had healed or how normal or abnormal it was for her scars not to heal, but he knew she’d been dead not two hours before and he didn’t care how strong she was, he knew she shouldn’t be doing anything. 

“That’s ridiculous,” he said crossing his arms over his chest. “Lieutenant, is it not standard procedure for any ranking officer to undergo mandatory biological assessment after a fatal event.”

Saryn looked between the two of them, her eyes shifting back and forth and realizing very quickly that this was not an argument she wanted to get involved in.  
“Ma’am,” she said keeping her eyes glued to the floor. “You know he’s right.”

“I’m pleased you’ve learned our protocols so quickly,” she acknowledged tilting her head but wearing a smug expression Marcus wasn’t fond of. “However, if you bothered to read it entirely you would have seen the addendum in place for wartime events and the commanding officer’s latitude regarding decisions.”

“I read it. It’s foolish.” His breathing was ragged, holding back his frustration as his shoulders crept higher up his neck. 

“Says the man who’s just cresting his fifth decade surrounded by multiple centenarians.” Sam stood almost nose to nose with him, looking up slightly but the power emanating from her body was enough to push Saryn back, but not him. “Care to wager a difference in our experience level.”

“Yes, I would,” his teeth gnashing together to avoid biting his words. “Because clearly age doesn’t guarantee wisdom.” It bothered him, her recklessness with her own well-being. Inside the mindscape she’d all but refused to save her own life, while allowing him to watch as she slipped away, her lifeforce draining onto the floor. Marcus couldn’t believe he was once again tied to a self-deprecating woman so intent on her own demise through sheer lack of self-preservation. 

Saryn practically was on the other side of the room. Their conversation had shifted from playful banter to biting snipes all while increasing the internal pressure in the medic lab. It wasn’t until the increase in temperature and pressure cracked the glass on one of the pods that the two of them stopped.

“Lieutenant,” Sam huffed, an air of impatience evaporating off her. “Please inform the Major that the Cadet and I are going to see the twins.”

Saryn’s eyes went wide, but with fear or reverence, Marcus couldn’t tell. “Yes Colonel.” Without a word Sam spun on her heel and marched from the room. Marcus looked back at Saryn; his mouth agape as he tried to process what just happened. 

“Well go after her,” Saryn waved, an exasperated sigh the last thing he heard as he quick-stepped out the door to follow Sam. 

It didn’t take long for Marcus to catch up to her, a visible limp present from her right hip made her gait difficult to maintain and he found himself steadying her a couple times as they made their way to the control deck. When the doors slid aside as they entered Command and Control, Sam was already barking orders at the crew on hand ensuring that no interruptions could be made in her train of thought. When she nearly collapsed from the hurried effort, Marcus managed to catch her weight and shift her into her office. 

“What the hell is happening with you?” He asked as she pushed away, balancing herself against her desk. Marcus watched as she near collapsed into the chair.

“It’s nothing I can’t handle,” she responded while beads of sweat broke out across her forehead and neck. Marcus didn’t wait as he laid the back of his hand against her skin.

“You have a fever; you were just resuscitated. Let someone else take command.”

“We’re not done,” she spat as she forced herself to her feet, wobbled to the wall console and opened her quarters, gripping onto the wall as she descended the stairs attempting not to fall. Marcus followed on her heels as she bypassed the central area of her quarters and headed to the mantle above the fireplace. Opening a weathered leatherbound book she flipped back the pages until a palm sized box fell out from the centre. 

Marcus tried to intervene but it was too late. Sam opened the box, pulled a glass sharp edged pipette from the container and stabbed it into her neck. Marcus watched as the blue luminescent liquid within the tube disappeared into her blood stream. He didn’t know what it was but didn’t have time to ask as she tossed the glass into the fire as it sparked to life removing all trace of it. 

Sam’s fierce gaze met his, daring him to question what he’d just witnessed, but the alarm sensors roaring to life around the station interrupted the thoughts that would have been vocalized. Sam tore off up the stairs, climbing the steps as if she could hover above them, all trace of her weakness and injuries vanishing. Her skin still bore the marks of their trip inside her mindscape but all illusions aside she seemed restored.

Marcus caught up grabbing her arms from behind and pulling her back against his chest. “What was that?” He whispered against her ear, the briefest concern that whatever she was on would impede her judgement, and not wanting her to be disgraced. 

“Later,” she responded before breaking free and standing centre stage in C&C receiving reports regarding the activities on Caryx. Saryn sat in front of a holographic projection of the planet below identifying underground tunnel sections and shapes within the destroyed cities that appeared to be moving. 

“Colonel, they’re activating,” Saryn explained as she highlighted the various sections of Caryx below where great landmasses appeared to be shifting and breaking through the ground above.

“Timeframe Lieutenant?” Sam asked, calculations already running through her mind as to whether they would have time for their final preparations. Saryn busily tapped away at the console, the hologram coming to life in front of them separating the bedrock sections of stone and sediment from the mechanical structures that were rising from the depths of the cities. 

Saryn froze, her breath coming in short rasps. “I’m sorry Colonel. The network anticipates arrival in thirteen hours. We’re out of time.”

C&C, a normally bustling network of people, technology, and network updates fell deathly quiet as everyone waited on Sam’s orders. Marcus could tell the strain of the past several days was falling heavily on her, but her eyes shifted across the data highlighted on the view screen as if processing the same information over and over in her own mind, affirming it, while also looking for alternatives. It was the same look she wore when they battled for supremacy within her mindscape, and when she destroyed him in Quinus. He couldn’t tell what she was thinking, but he knew the moment she stopped. Sam let out a deep breath, squared her shoulders, lifted her chin high and spun around on the team scattered about the room, and did something even Marcus wasn’t prepared for, she laughed. Not the sort of wholesome laugh brought on by the joy of seeing a child discover something new, or the response to a good joke. It was resolute, as if an expectation she knew was coming for years had finally arrived, and a sense of relief washed over her as she succumbed to an inevitability. 

“We knew this was coming,” she said with an air of calm. “Lieutenant, ensure the last of those inoculations are complete, including yourself and the command team, and order everyone to the Coliseum in two hours. Cadet Kane and I are heading to the twins.”

“Colonel,” Saryn begged. “I strongly suggest we postpone tonight until after this battle.”

“No,” Sam commanded. There was no sense of hesitation or room for negotiation in her command. “Our people need assurance, and change. We have ample resources, our weaponry is ready, and our command team is strong, but fear cannot persist if we’re to win the day. Ensure everything is prepared.” 

Saryn nodded as Sam turned away. “You know your duties, get to it.” C&C erupted as the staff busied themselves from station to station. Saryn was inputting instructions into the network system and glanced at Sam when she was finished. 

“It’s time,” Sam said as she gestured for Marcus to follow her. “Thirty seconds Lieutenant and then activate. Two hours by Alpha Site’s time, that’s all we get, understood.”

“Yes Ma’am.”

The transport pod surged to life in the centre of C&C as yellow particles began to swirl inside its shell. Marcus looked on in shock as the pod sequence was locked in to coordinates that would launch them into the depths of space. They hadn’t used the transport pods since Caryx had been bombed and Cyrus attempted to breach Alpha Site through them, and to activate even one connected to the network was a risk, so he couldn’t understand the risk Sam was taking.

“Get in,” she ordered as she waved towards the pod. 

“Ten seconds Colonel,” Saryn called. Marcus barely had a chance to register as Sam pulled him into the pod, his chest crashing against her back. 

“This will be rough,” she yelled as the particles around them began to emit a piercing screech, scratching grooves into the glass around them. The pod shook as the particles swung around them in massive tornadoes, unable to land or secure a specific point of contact to land on. “Now Lieutenant.”

Saryn keyed in an alphanumeric sequence directly into the pod and executed the code. Marcus’s hands found the inside surface of the pod as it shook so forcefully, he thought the glass would shatter. The pressure inside the walls flattened them both against the floor, him beneath and Sam trying in vain not to crush him with her added weight, but in an instant they were gone, leaving behind nothing in the pod but a cracked series of bio-electrical panels in the base of the pod. 

“Shut it down now,” Saryn yelled as the pod began to spark and flame. The team worked to separate the pod from the transport network as a string of biological readings began to materialize inside the pod. A translucent figure in silver armour appeared briefly before they were able to segregate the signal and eliminate the connection. The soldier inside the pod releasing a wailing cry as their pattern disintegrated inside the pod leaving behind nothing but white dust. Saryn whooped as she nearly jumped out of her skin. “Lock out successful,” she exhaled a relieved sigh. “We’ll try this again in two hours.”

“Lieutenant,” a communication tech called from a station scanning the biodata from both the pod, and tracking Sam and Marcus’s signals through space. 

“Yes.”

“I have confirmation the Colonel and Cadet arrived at Beta Site,” the woman explained. “But there’s something else about the biodata from the intruder’s remains.”

Saryn waited patiently while the tech transferred the biodata to a portable datapad and handed it to her. The clear screen glimmered to life displaying a complex sequence of genetic markers consistent with someone born on Caryx, but with a few alterations only found in a specialized group of their species.

“Run the sequence again,” Saryn ordered. “We need to be certain. If it’s correct, we’re going to be facing a lot more than soldiers in a few hours. We’re going to be fighting Paladins.”

“Shouldn’t we notify the Colonel?”

Saryn typed a code into her terminal and watched as it configured a time lapsed projection of the next two hours. “We can’t. They’re in a comms blackout until the time expires.” Saryn tapped her index finger against her lower teeth, a nervous habit she’d never been able to break since the war. “Get Major Ausin up here, now.”

_Caryx (Origin Planet below Alpha Site) – T – 1 Day_

The night had been a restless one for them all. It was difficult enough trying to sleep before with the constant presence of stimulants in their systems and the impending finality of a ticking clock tapping out the last few hours of their lives, but it was worse with their hands bound above their heads, synthetic bands wrapped so tightly around their wrists that it required constant shifting to allow blood flow into the fingers. 

The damp walls around them left a chill hanging in the air, accentuated by the icy fog that exhaled from their dry lips every time they breathed. It had been hours since they’d seen anyone, a guard, the commanders, nothing. They’d been left to rot, alone, cold and hungry with no concept of when they would suffer their next ordeal. The few that tried to sleep were quickly awoken. It was too dangerous in their physical state. They might never wake again.

It wouldn’t have mattered anyway. No one was sleeping. Indra, Lexa, Luna, and Lincoln were huddled together as closely as their bonds would permit, whispering in Trig to prevent an ease of understanding for their captors. It wouldn’t be long before they were able to translate it but for the moment it was their only advantage. Diyoza was wedged in a corner between Sinclair and Roan, their clothing still spattered with crusted blood from the battle and executions on the surface. She had been relentlessly fussing with the restraints on her wrists and managed to slip a portion of one hand free, but the visible toll on her skin covered in bloody abrasions seemed to slow her temporarily.

Octavia, Raven, and Abby we’re all strapped to a foundation beam which at one point may have held the roof above them aloft, but now it only secured them in place. Clarke’s head rested in Abby’s lap, her breathing barely registering and her pulse so low Abby feared she’d lost her daughter completely more times in the night than she could count. Raven collapsed against the beam.

“Raven wake up,” Abby shook her. “You can’t sleep.” Abby reached out with her foot attempting to kick Raven back to consciousness, but she couldn’t reach. “Octavia please.”

Octavia dropped her heel on Raven’s closest leg, but still nothing. She pulled up on the bands holding her wrists until she was perched on her toes, managed to wriggle over to Raven’s arms, and in a quick hop latched on to her skin with her teeth. Octavia bit down hard until blood leaked from between her teeth, but it was enough. 

“Ow,” Raven yelped, as she pulled back from the attack, Octavia’s deep teeth marks oozing from her skin. “What the hell?”

“You can’t sleep,” Octavia said rolling her eyes.

“Couldn’t think of another way to wake me up,” Raven hissed as the raw skin pulled as she shifted back against the beam.

“It wasn’t working,” Abby explained. “I’m sorry Raven. I don’t know what will happen if we sleep.”

“Does it matter anymore?” Octavia said as she sat back crossing her legs and resting her head against her arms. “We can’t get out, and as far as our enemy is concerned, we’re of no more use to them. They’ve left us here to die.”

“I don’t think so,” Diyoza mumbled from a few feet away. “If they wanted us dead, they would’ve executed us up there.”

“Give me another chance I’ll give them a reason to,” Octavia spat. 

“So, you’ll get yourself killed and the rest of us in the process,” Abby glared. “Sounds familiar. You haven’t learned a thing.”

“Look Abby, I’m sorry about Jake, about Kane…”

“Don’t,” Abby huffed. “You have nothing to say I want to here. After everything we’ve been through, you’d just throw it all away again, like you have nothing left to lose.” Abby’s rage was boiling over. She’d managed to keep it in check since this whole ordeal began but as Jake’s name swirled around in her mind, the look of inescapable sorrow combined with acceptance as his finger wrapped around her wrist, the knife twisting back towards him, she couldn’t hold back the floodgates anymore. 

“I don’t,” Octavia said. Abby’s eyes shifted to Lincoln and back to Octavia as if that’s all the explanation that was needed. “Do you think having Lincoln back is enough? We can’t go back. We’re not the people we were.”

“We don’t have to be,” Abby moaned as the frustration threatened to turn into tears. She was fighting back every urge in her body to just resign herself to the inevitable and surrender to the grief that surged through her. At any moment she could fall victim to its pull and never be able to pull herself out again, but she wouldn’t fail, not with Raven and Clarke resting right beside her, not with her friends and allies around her. If there was even a chance they could still escape she would fan that flame until her dying breath. “I still have people worth fighting for. I won’t surrender, but I won’t run head first into a death sentence either.”

“Then you’ll do nothing,” Octavia said. “Now that does sound familiar. How many times did you leave me to carry the burden of keeping us alive, alone? Hmm, how many times did you march me out in front to take the blame?”

“You knew what we had to do to survive.”

“And I did it.”

“It got out of control.”

“What did you think was going to happen? Twelve clans were just going to fall in line just like the stations did on the Ark. Grounders fight for their own. We had to make them our own, One Kru was the only way.”

“And the executions? You and Cyrus have so much in common.” Abby knew Octavia wasn’t to blame for Jake’s death, for Clarke’s condition, for any of it, but right now she was an easy outlet for her fury. Besides, this fight had been coming for a long time. 

“You never gave me an alternative,” Octavia growled. “You, Kane, the other ambassadors, even Indra. None of you ever gave me a better way, but you loved finding fault in what kept us alive.”

“Then why did you have to march on the valley? You killed them all.”

“You were the traitors that caused that. Trusting criminals, yeah that worked out so well for us.”

“Are you two finished?” Diyoza chimed in, in a tone a mother would often use to silence squabbling children. “First of all, I’ve learned enough about you Octavia to know your default setting is to fight. Abby, you were never comfortable with my offer to share the valley. It took Kane to bridge the gap, but let’s make one thing perfectly clear, you two falling into the same patterns of behaviour won’t help us now. Your suspicions of my crew, despite our colourful pasts, were poorly aimed, and fatally costly. After all, you did lose the majority of your people.”

Octavia glared back at Diyoza, but said nothing. They’d come to know each other since being on Caryx, and Octavia couldn’t reconcile the two versions of Diyoza in her head into one person. She only thought of her as her present self, and once you’ve fought with someone in battle, that union never goes away. 

Abby couldn’t fault Diyoza’s conclusion or the troubling thoughts that it brought to the surface in her own mind. If they had only been able to come to terms on Earth they may never have ended up in their current situation. The what ifs and maybes circulated in her mind like a nebula of never-ending possibilities.

“Everything you two are arguing about doesn’t matter anymore,” Diyoza said, a low laugh rumbling through her. “We either stand together and find a way out of this mess, or we die here. I know which I’d prefer, besides we all can agree that these bastards should really pay for what they’ve done.”

Abby nodded, slowly as if emphasizing everything Diyoza had said and agreeing to it in slow and steady submission. “I don’t know what will happen next, or what to do about right now, but I’m tired. We’re on another world, with every possibility of still finding a way to survive. I have to believe in that.”

Octavia looked away, her jaw muscles tensing along her face, her fingers clenching as she pulled against the beam with no effect. She kicked out against the beam, venting her frustration, her rage, her grief, everything she’d every held like a balloon around her heart. The metal sounded in the small space echoing off the walls with the steady dripping of water from the dampened stone that surrounded them. 

“Octavia stop,” Abby pleaded. She couldn’t find it in her to fight anymore. Abby watched as the once fierce Red Queen came apart at the seams, screaming and wrenching at her restraints until her wrists were a bloody mess. They hadn’t had time to slow down and think until now and the weight of their losses were beginning to stack up around them, but as Abby glanced down at Clarke’s soft hair encircling her head so gently nestled into the cradle of her knee, she felt the dam holding back her grief crack.

“I’m not the girl under the floor anymore,” Octavia murmured, more to herself than to the others. “I’m not a Grounder, I’m not Skaikru, I’m not a champion or a commander, and Blodreina is dead, so who am I now?”

Abby felt the pain of Octavia’s anguish. It was something they shared, and maybe the slightest of connections that could bond them together. Forgiveness was something she sought after the bunker, but it wasn’t Octavia that needed to give it, and it made Abby shudder to think that would be a regret she would carry to her last breath. Abby’s shoulders dropped, her muscles finally relaxing as all tension in her body surrendered to the tsunami that broke through. She couldn’t hold it back anymore. Once the tears began to fall, they wouldn’t stop. Her small sobs erupting into choking wails as she thrashed her arms against the restraints burying her muffled cries in her arms attempting to fight the final dread of when it stopped and she wouldn’t feel anything at all. 

The room dropped to complete silence. No one interfered until the cries transformed into staggered breaths and small whimpers barely audible except for the echo around the space. Octavia’s manic gaze was glued to the side of the beam, the edge dull but sharp enough to cause damage if someone was determined enough. She fell forward allowing the edge to catch her forehead right above her left eye. The dull clunk of skull against metal cracked the silence as Diyoza fought to pull her hands free and stop Octavia before it was too late. 

Abby felt the weight of the beam shift on the first hit, peeled her lids back enough to watch as Octavia struck it again leaving a small stream of blood flowing from the fresh laceration above her eye. She felt in a daze, as if she was watching the girl in slow motion. Abby’s body moved without her permission, her instincts taking over as she tucked her feet underneath her frozen limbs. Her will overcoming her despair as the need to stop Octavia, to heal her, to help her became her only driving impulse.  
Abby shifted around the beam so her and Octavia were finally eye to eye without anything between them. “I don’t know who you are anymore, but maybe we can find out together.” Abby gave the girl the slightest reassuring smile. It was all she could muster considering, but seemed to be enough. “I’m willing to try if you are.” Octavia’s breaths were short, her back muscles rigid and twitching as if readying for an attack, but it was the far of stare that concerned Abby.

“Octavia,” Abby soothed as she managed to lean into the girl’s side. “I don’t want to die in here. Do you?” Octavia’s glazed eyes met her own, the visible shake in her head attempting to remove the dizziness of an almost certain concussion. 

“No,” she answered. Octavia brushed her swelling forehead against her arm, wiping the blood from her eyes as the flow slowed. “I really don’t.” When she finally raised her sight above the beam, Lincoln was standing, leaning out and fighting against his bonds just as fervently as she had. 

“I don’t think he wants you to either,” Abby said her voice softening from the hoarse curses that threatened to escape. 

“I don’t know what comes next,” Octavia said dropping onto her knees. 

“Let’s get out of here first,” Abby nodded. “Then we’ll worry about what comes next.”

“And if I’m not worth saving?”

Abby could imagine the emotional state Octavia was in. She’d shared it. The physical pain a constant onslaught of the mind subjecting her to an endless suffering. Whether it was unconsciously caused or not didn’t matter, if Octavia felt she deserved to suffer, she would. They’d survived six years underground to finally reach the surface and still suffer abuse of their own making. Marcus and Clarke had helped her overcome her torment, maybe she could help Octavia conquer hers. 

Abby’s expression softened. “Everyone is worth saving.”

“Everyone?” Diyoza interrupted with a questioning gleam in her eyes.

Raven huffed. “Well, maybe not Cyrus.” Diyoza chuckled and the atmosphere in the room lifted slightly. The levity felt misplaced considering the situation they were in, but it couldn’t hurt. 

“Yes,” Abby and Octavia replied together before sharing the briefest of tiny smirks. 

“No matter,” Lexa finally broke into the conversation leaving all in the room spinning their heads in surprise. “We have a solution.”

Nobody said a word as Lexa and Luna explained a rather simplistic plan that would lead them to escape their bonds, and eventually their prison if they could last the night. Indra and Lincoln nodded along as the plan was laid out, occasionally adding input from what they’d seen on the surface versus the pathways through the tunnel system underground. Abby had been in such a fog when they’d been shuffled down into this cell that she hadn’t noticed the directions of the tunnels, but the former commander, ever watchful and paying attention, mapped out the terrain alongside Luna creating a mental map of the area they now occupied. 

Luna worked to shift her thumb out of its joint and slid the band off her wrists, popping it back in with barely a wince as she repeated the process on the other. There was nothing inside the cell they could use to cut the synthetic bands, and after a few attempts to bite free of them, they realized the bonds wouldn’t be broken so easily, so one by one Luna dislocated each of their thumbs in turn to break them free. 

“Step one complete,” Diyoza commented. “Now we just figure out how to get out of this room.”

“I’m more curious as to why we’re not guarded,” Sinclair said cradling his one hand after his thumb refused to reset properly the first couple times. Sinclair had been silent since witnessing Thelonius’s rather unceremonious end and Jake’s sacrifice, but he’d always been able to compartmentalize when it was necessary, and with Raven’s condition worsening he came back to himself. 

“Good point,” Diyoza agreed. “I like you.” Sinclair shrugged as he started to examine the confines of the space more carefully. He ran the pads of his fingers along the seems of the walls feeling meticulously until the temperature differential between the stone shifted. He rapped his knuckles against a section of wall barely a foot and a half across and three feet high. 

“Here,” Sinclair pointed as he tapped the section of wall listening intently to the percussive changes in tone the concrete sounded. “It’s a hollow section. I’m guessing maybe an old watermain, or some sort of piping. We’d have to cave it in to be sure.”

“With what?” Roan asked as he gestured toward the empty room. 

Sinclair tilted his head towards the metal beam in the centre. “That looks like a good battering ram to me. Just the right amount of force and the wall should break away.”

“We don’t know what’s on the other side,” Indra said. “Better to stay put. Attack the guards when they return.”

Lexa shook her head. “We have no idea when they will return, if at all. Sitting here we are targets. We take the fight to them.”

“We tried that,” Luna said, her voice calm amidst the rising tempers. “We lost two in the process.” Luna and Lexa were hardly the perfect pair, but they knew each other well and anticipated the other’s response, sparring with words rather than weapons. It was almost as if they were fighting a battle that should have been fought long before, each one searching for the supremacy over the other. 

Sinclair managed to shift the beam during the time the group was squabbling drawing a shrill clang as the metal broke free of the ceiling above. “I don’t know about all of you, but I’ve been here long enough. It’s a prisoner’s duty to escape, so let’s get on it.” 

“Aye boss,” Raven cheered. The skin at Sinclair’s eyes crinkled as a proud smile beamed at her through the dark. Raven had an otherworldly strength, unyielding and unfailing despite the trials she’d suffered. He wouldn’t let her die in that cell. 

“Not you,” he ordered as Raven crossed her arms and leaned back against the wall.

“You’ll regret that,” she said baiting him. He didn’t bite.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed. :D


End file.
